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1. from the drop down menu When you exit the application you are brought right back to geoSHELL instead of the DeskTop If you know the name of the file you would like to load you don t even have to look for it in the directory Just enter the name and geoSHELL will find it for you If it is 3 rT aa i Chapter 1 Getting Started not on the active drive then geoSHELL will search the other drives for it and load and run it from the drive it is found on This feature saves a lot of time that you would normally spend searching through the DeskTop pages for the program that you need The only thing you must keep in mind if you are using more than two drives is that some applications do not work real well from drive C Where they usually have a problem is when they are trying to access the drives themselves GeoWrite has some quirks about being used from drive C It expects to search drives A and B for it s data files It will work however within certain limitations Try various programs and get to know what works from drive C and what doesn t At least now you have that option The DeskTop won t let you use drive C not even for copying files It makes you first swap drive C with either A or B In fact geoSHELL also has provisions for installing and using a fourth drive as drive D You will find details of this in other parts of this manual Setting Up Your Bootdisk Once you become familiar with geoSHELL you may wish to c
2. t gt Ko E a a yo po i Chapter 6 Resident Commands output This command will display the filename of your current printer driver This command is used to remind you as to what printer driver you arc currently using In most cases you would not need to use this command unless you frequently change printer drivers You might want to refer to the install command for information on how to change printer drivers No parameter is required with this command parent This command works when using native partitions on CMD devices such as the HD or RamLink From BASIC you might already know that you can use cd followed by a left arrow to move to the subdirectory that is the parent of the one you are currently in And with gcoSHELL we can send commands to the drive but we cannot produce the left arrow character So this command was created to replace this sequence of keys By using parent you can return to whatever directory you passed through to get to the current subdirectory you are in This will move up one directory Example parent This will move up two directories Example parent parent print This command will perform the same function as if you clicked on a data file s icon and dragged it down to the printer icon and dropped it while using the DeskTop The desired data file along with it s parent application would be loaded and then the application would proceed to print the file Wh
3. s command processor This allows you to include little notes to remind you as to what your startup file is supposed to do To produce the curly braces hold down the CMDR key and press the colon key for the left curly brace and the semi colon key for the right one The exec Command Exec performs essentially the same thing as the startup command would do with a few minor differences It will load in a GeoWrite file and execute any commands that it finds on page one All other pages are ignored In reality exec mainly gets the file loaded into memory and then hands the job over to the startup command to finish the operation Another difference with exec is that an exec file can have any name A startup file 20 j i f f iam a ey ie 1 1 Chapter 5 Startup File must be named Startup You can set up an exec file to perform routine tasks that you might do on a regular basis This can save on a lot of repetitious work Also where startup only looks at the current drive for a startup file exec will look at all of the drives for the requested exec file even a path partition if one has been set Just like with a startup file if you issuc an exec command from within a startup file or another exec file the new exec file will take over control and any command that followed the exec command in the file will be ignored But with this power you could chai
4. would when you are using the rename command Example fcopy b newfile oldfile This will make another copy of the desired file and give it the name that you specify In this manner fcopy will work with the currently active drive as the destination If the new filename already exists then the copy will not proceed This mode of fcopy is handy for making successive backups of a data file you might be working on You can duplicate a file to any drive or partition on your system Since fcopy normally overwrites a file with the same name you can use the duplicate mode to prevent this from happening By making the newname the same as the existing name you will be assured that an existing copy is not overwritten whenever you wish to copy a file and keep the name the same fcopy a2 filename This example would copy a file from the current drive to drive A partition number 2 If drive A is the current drive then it would copy from the current partition to partition 2 as long as both partitions are of the same type i e 1581 and 1581 If partition 2 is the current partition then you will be reported with an error For this purpose you would want to use the duplicate mode as suggested above i ae a A are o E Chapter 7 Transient Commands Example fcopy h3 filename In this manner you are specifying the HD as the destination drive with the h in the destination parameter You are also telling copy to use partitio
5. But don t be intimidated by it if you don t understand it You can get along just fine without it It has been provided for those who have been hungering for it and those people will greatly appreciate it 39 Chapter 7 Transient Commands Chapter 7 Transient Commands What is a Transient Command There are a number of commands supplied with the seoSHELL disk that reside either within the gcoSHELL file or are contained within their own file These commands are known as transient commands The transients that are contained within the geoSHELL file are considered internal transients and the ones that arc contained within their own file are considered external transients As far as you the user is concerned both types may be treated the same as far as any rules governing their use is concerned They may be executed just like any resident command in geoSHELL with the exception that they are not stored in memory for immediate access They must be loaded from the disk However once a transient command is loaded it will stay resident in memory until you perform an action that requires use of that same memory arca where a transient command is loaded Certain resident commands need to also use this memory area for a work area and so they will erase any transient command that might be loaded This is not really a problem other than the next time you need the transicnt command it will have to load from disk again Fortunately
6. GEOPUBLISH is an application it will be loaded and the startup file will end at that point If it was a command that did not cause an end to the startup file then execution of the startup file would keep on going from that point The right curly brace will be ignored Once a keypress match is found getkey is finished with it s job and returns contro to the command processor If a match had not been found then getkey would still be waiting for a keypress Some rules must bc followed when putting getkey in a startup file The letter or number that will be put next to the left curly brace must not have a space between it and the curly brace However a space must follow this character Plus there must be at Icast one space to the lefi of the right curly brace and the last command inside the curly braces You can sec where this one single command can provide us with a very flexible means of receiving input from the user 22 pF Cw a eee Chapter 6 Resident Commands Chapter 6 Resident Commands Contained within geoSHELL when it is loaded into the computer are a number of commands They are known as resident commands since they reside in memory Commands that must be loaded from disk are known as transient commands Refer to Chapter 7 for more information on the transicnt commands Resident commands are available any time geoSHELL is loaded When you type the name of a resident command it will be imm
7. The getkey Command Resident Commands 23 Transient Commands 40 What Is A Transient Command Internal Transient Commands External Transient Commands The Programmable Function Keys 58 The Built In Hot Keys 60 What Are The Hot Keys Special Features For CMD Devices 63 Special DOS Wedge Commands The path Command The Commands At A Glance 66 An introduction To geoSHELL What is geoSHELL geoSHELL is a user interface that is used exclusively with the GEOS operating system on a Commodore 64 or 128 Much like the DeskTop geoSHELL can perform most of the functions that a GEOS user necds for managing disk files Unlike the DeskTop however geoSHELL is almost entirely text based rather than using icons and pull down menus This does not mean that icons and menus cannot be used however Therefore the initial appearance of geoSHELL Icads one to believe that it is not user friendly However once you become famuliar with it you will find yourself getting around in GEOS to be much faster and easier geoSHELL recognizes a number of commands that the user may type on the keyboard As an example simply type the command dir and hit RETURN if you wish to view a directory of the disk The commands that geoSHELL recognizes are easy to remember and casy to type as there are no complicated scrics of commas colons parentheses or slashes to remember If a command requires a parameter to follow it just remember to include one space betw
8. character to the left of the cursor and bring the characters to the right along with it unless the cursor is already to the left side of the window The cursor will be Jefi blinking on the spot where the character was deleted from The ALT Key The ALT key is found only on the 128 and performs the function of switching back and forth between the 80 and 40 column modes The HELP Key The HELP key on the 128 will activate the transient command help if it cxists on any 15 Chapter 4 The Keyboard one of the drives just as if you typed in the command help The SHIFT RUN Key Combination If you ve ever uscd a fast load type cartridge or even JiffyDos then you have probably used the SHIFT RUN combination to load and run the first file on the disk This also works with geoSHELL If the first file is not of a type that can be loaded and run then geoSHELL will keep looking until it comes to one that can The Numerical Keys You can use the number keys to make geoSHELL use different pages of your startup file whenever geoSHELL is loading For instance hold down the 5 key to execute the startup sequence on page 5 of your startup file Using the zero key causes the startup file to be ignored The startup sequence begins just after the copyright notice appears So have your finger on the desired key before this appears and hold it until you see the screen freeze then release it If you do not touch any of the keys the first page
9. exit to a program that is capable of loading and 28 ne E ee ae ee a i K Chapter 6 Resident Commands Tunning other programs In the case of exiting to GEOWRITE you would be stuck and have to shut down and reboot fastdir This command causes a faster directory display to occur since it will tell geoSHELL to only display the filenames and no other information about the files This command does not display a directory by itself it only sets a flag telling geoSHELL how to display the directories from this point on You can cancel this effect by using the slowdir command If you wish to make this setting your default use the custom command No parameter 1s required for this command geos This command will affect the disk that is in the current drive by making it into a GEOS disk If the disk is already a GEOS disk then nothing will happen But if it is nota GEOS disk it will have a few changes made to it that occur to GEOS disks One of the changes involves delegating a sector on the disk for use im storing border files entries This sector is a little directory by itself It can hold up to eight directory entries geoSHELL does not require any disk to be a GEOS disk but this command was implemented for compatibility with the DeskTop No parameter is required with this command getkey Here is a handy command that is used in startup or exec files It will wait for the user to press a key on the
10. help as is displayed on the screen just by typing help followed by a subject that is contained within the helpfile This helpfile always guides you along the way with subjects that pertain to the subject you are currently viewing The best way to understand how it works is to just try it Enter help and follow the prompts from there hotkey You would use this command by itself whenever you wish to view your current hotkey settings This command also allows you to define a new hotkey or to erase an existing one Here s an example hotkey mf myfile This will define mf to load and run a file called myfile It is not put into effect until it is saved with savekeys Refer to Chapter 9 for a more detailed explanation of this command 5 Chapter 7 Transient Commands internal There are two ways to use this command By issuing the command without any parameters all of the internal commands that are currently available will be listed The command does not neccessarily check every drive It will only search until it finds the geoSHELL file Then that particular copy of geoSHELL is checked and the commands contained within are displayed The normal way that geoSHELL is searched is also used with this command If you issue the command followed by a valid external transient command name then that command will be eliminated as an external command and placed within the geoSHELL file on the currently active drive It will then be
11. it s directory entry with geoSHELL or you could use the info command or you could use the DeskTop s function for viewing the info for a file This can be done by clicking on Chapter 1 Getting Started info from the DeskTop s file drop down menu Also when viewing files by filetype on the DeskTop you will see the order in which the files are placed for each different filetype Setting Up Your Workdisks Setting up a workdisk to use with geoSHELL is no different than what you have been doing so far All you have to do is copy geoSHELL to your disks and have it available for GEOS just like you would the DeskTop But if you wish to save some space on the bulk of your disks you will find a file on your geoSHELL program disk called getshell It has an icon that looks just like the transient commands but is really a stand alone AUTO EXEC file Yes this file will automatically run when GEOS first boots up But you would want it placed just in front of geoSHELL When getshell is loaded and run nothing happens on the screen but getshell has the job of finding geoSHELL and getting it loaded for you Now this does not mean that getshell is needed an order to use geoSHELL because you can do without it if you want But once getshell has been loaded and run it becomes the default file that GEOS looks for whenever you exit an application If you should exit from drive C GEOS will only look at drives C and D for
12. jumping around looking for a string of commands to execute No parameter is required for this command exit This command will exit geoSHELL and return you to the DeskTop If you loaded geoSHELI from an alternative DeskTop then you will exit to that one This command performs the same as if you were to click on the close button at the upper right of the gcoSHELL window Normally a parameter 1s not required with this command But you might find a time when you wish to exii to a different interface than the one which you entered geoSHELL from Yes you can boot up from the DeskTop and then exit to the gateWay All you have to do is supply a filename after the exit command like this exit gateWay This will exit geoSHELL and make gateWay the new default that GEOS will look for when you exit an application In order to return to geoSHELL you will double click un the geoSHELL icon from the DeskTop or whatever other interface you might be using If you are using the getshell application with geoSHEI1 then you would want to double click on that one instead in order to keep it active Be careful when supplying a parameter with this command geoSHELL has no idea as to what kind of program you are specifying You could enter exit GEOWRITE and sure enough GEOWRITE would then appear on the screen But when you try to quit GEOWRITE from the drop down menu guess what happens You will return right back to GEOWRITE You need to
13. load times are very quick There are actually three transient command areas in memory that are designated for this use However most commands will generally use the main area known as Trans Comm You need not be concerned with this aspect except for the few commands that will use Trans2Comm and Trans3Comm The latter two areas are actually in the same buffer as that which is used by the startup and exec commands This ts not a problem except that when a startup file or exec file is loaded it will erase a command from this area and will have to reload from disk the next time you use the command Likewise a transient command that uses this area will only work as the last command in a startup file or exec fiie Once again don t worry about this since there are very few commands that will need to load into this area Any that do must follow certain rules in their function Once again don t be concerned with this aspect unless you are a programmer wishing to write a command for geoSHELL If so all the needed information is included in the geoSHELL Programmer s Package 40 a ee eee ee ea ee f j Chapter 7 Transient Commands Internal Transient Commands When geoSHELL loads into memory it contains a number of built in resident commands But there are still a number of commands contained in the geoSHELL file on disk These are the internal transient commands To access any of these you simply type the command at the ke
14. of your startup file will execute The Left Arrow Key Using the left arrow key will move the cursor to the start of the linc that it is on This allows you to begin typing commands in front of whatever text is already on the line This accomplishes the same function as if you clicked once ona line Don t confuse the left arrow key with the left cursor key The left arrow key is at the upper left of your keyboard The UP ARROW and CNIDR UP ARROW Keys The UP ARROW and the CMDR UP ARROW have special meanings in geoSHELL Multiple commands may be entered on a line When geoSHELL is finished cxecuting a command it will look to see if there is another command on the same line If so it will be handled also Some commands need a terminator after their parameter so that geoSHEL 1 knows where the next command is If you were to type in a command that requires a filename for a parameter and you Chapter 4 The Keyboard want to type in another command after this onc then you need to use the UP ARROW to terminate the filename The reason for this is that geoSHELE has no idea as to how long your filename is It can be from one character to sixteen characters long If the command with a filename is the last command or the only command on the line don t worry about it because geoSHELL will see the end of the line But if you follow with another command geoSHELL will come to the UP ARROW and know that what follows is another command and no
15. that you can change with this command are as follows device number 4 or 5 secondary address 0 255 lmefeeds y orn character mode a or p Here s an example for using these settings pconf 47ya This will use device number 4 with a secondary address of 7 The y tells geoSHELL to send linefeeds after a carriage return And the a informs it to use ASCII characters If your printer did not necd linefceds you would use an n in place of the y And if your printer required PETASCH characters you would use a p in place of the a Here s another example pconf 512ya This will use device number 5 with a secondary address of 12 send linefeeds and ASCII characters You might want to refer to Chapter 6 for more info on using the DOS wedge command P remove This command will remove a drive from the system All you have to do is specify the desired drive A B C or D and geoSHELL will then make that drive transparent to GEOS After issuing this command it is a good idea to turn the drive off if it is a real drive If it is a ramdisk then geoSHELL handles the whole job for you Here s an example remove d This would take drive D out of the system If you use four drives and wish to exit back to either the DeskTop or gateWay you should remove drive D from the system The reason is that the DeskTop and gateWay do not support the fourth drive like geoSHEL I does It is likely that
16. the wait command at that point in the file Then once you type any key the startup file will continue on and process the remainder of the commands in the file There is no parameter required for this command The DOS Wedge Built right into geoSHELL are some routines that provide the user with a DOS wedge To some degree this is geoSHELL s own interpretation of a DOS wedge There are some similarities between this one and others and there are also some nice enhancements that you won t find in any other DOS wedge for the Commodore much less while being in the GEOS environment For those of you who arc not familiar with a wedge this is a way for you to send a command directly to the disk drive s own command channel It allows a certain degree of communication with the little built in computer contained within the disk drive The way to invoke a DOS wedge command is with the key All DOS wedge commands used in geoSHELL begin with this character For most purposes you won t need to use a DOS wedge However there are some advantages in doing so especially with the CMD devices If you were to type the key by itself and hit RETURN you will be presented with a message from the drive that looks something like this 0 0K 0 0 This tells you that the drive is not currently detecting any errors If you follow the key with any othcr characters these characters will be sent to the drive and the drive will then inter
17. the window You might want to use this when creating custom menus or before using the echo command No parameter is required with this command date This command by itself will display the current date that is set within the GEOS kernal It will also allow you to change the date if you follow it with a valid parameter The parameter must be in the format of mmddyy That is two digits to 25 Chapter 6 Resident Commands represent the month followed by two digits to represent the day of the month and two digits for the year Here s an example date 921292 This will set the date to February 12 1992 Notice that the month of February was represented by 02 You must supply a leading zero even when a month or a day would equal less than 10 geoSHELL expects to see a total of six digits for the date parameter Since this is a fixed length parameter you arc not required to use a terminator after the parameter when following it with anothcr command on the same line ddate Don t confuse this command with the date command This command affects the way directories are displayed on a 40 column screen It stands for display date So therefore whenever you are viewing a directory you will see the filenames followed by the date and time that the files were created or last modified The command dtype performs the opposite of this command No parameter is required for this command delete This c
18. Date Parameter If you would like to display all of the files from a specific date cdir can also use a date parameter cdir 041292 This will display all of the files created or modified from April 12 1992 and later This parameter is entered in the same format as if you were entering the date to set the clock From these examples you can see how easy itis to locate a file no matter where it is in your directory If you can remember just onc thing about the file whether it be part of it s filename or it s filetype you can find it fast Chapter 3 Load and Run Files Chapter 3 Load And Run Files Once you become familiar with the various ways of viewing directories you will find that there is more than one way to load and run a file from geoSHELL Of course you can simply type the name of the file and geoSHELL will locate it and run it Or you can save typing the filename if you find it in a directory listing Now you can cursor back up to the filename in the directory listing and hit RETURN This will have the same effect as typing the filename directly You could also click on the line containing the desired filename which will place the cursor at the beginning of the line and then hit RETURN Or you could simply double click on the filename Use whichever method you feel most comfortable with Once in awhile you will need to load a file with the samc name as one of the geoSHELL commands The problem with this
19. all of your drives and even your path partition for the desired file This makes for a very powerful command With just a few keystrokes you can execute a whole series of commands at will exec filename Naturally a filename is uscd for the parameter Also just as with a startup file you create an exec file using GeoWnite Refer to Chapter 5 for more info on exec files and startup files fcopy This is a filecopier that can copy any type of GEOS file as well as any standard CBM 43 Chapter 7 Transient Commands file except for relative files When you use this command the currently active drive is the source drive and you must specify the destination drive If a file of the same name is found on the destination drive it will be deleted and replaced with the file that you are copying fcopy also has the ability to duplicate a file on the same disk and it can also copy files from one partition to another or from one drive to another drive s partition on a CMD device HD FD RD or RL Here is one example fcopy b filename This is the format that you would use the most The b in this example is your destination drive and filename would be the name of the file you want to copy Be sure to put a space before and after the b The destination drive can be any other drive that is currently logged on to your system To use fcopy in it s duplicate mode you must specify the desired file much like you
20. an have a nicer look to your screen with this command The next thing that might surprise you is that this is a command that has a graphical look to it The geoSHELL window is erased from the screen while this command is being used You are now presented with a picture of a monitor along with various color scttings that you may select from Your settings are viewed as you choose them Once you selected the ones you d like just click on the exit box to redraw the geoSIIELL window If you like these settings use the command custom to save them as your default settings external There are two ways to use this command By issuing the command without any parameters all of the external commands that are currently available will be listed All of the drives are checked including the path partition if one is designated This allows you to quickly check to see if a particular command is available If you use external followed by the name of an existing internal transient command then that command will be removed from the geoSHELL file on the currently active drive and placed into it s own filc on the disk thereby making the command into an external transient Example external type This will remove the type command from geoSHELL and make it a separate external transient command The external command is uscful for trimming your copy of geoSHELL of commands that are rarely used There is no way to remove resident co
21. an use this command to go straight to the root directory run This command will load and run a file if the desired one can be found on one of the drives on your system In most cases this command is not necded You can avoid oe Ae o y SR ee eee ee A Geese ye Ae ir re er ae Me E i i i Chapter 6 Resident Commands using this command just by typing the name of the file by itself Where this command might be needed is when you wishto run a file that also has the sai e name as a geoSHELL command If you were to type the name of a command the command would take first priority and be executed instead of the file you really wanted to run For this reason you would use run followed by the filename Here s an example run filename This will cause geoSHELL to ignore any commands that are resident in memory and instead to look for a file called filename on one of the drives 40 and s80 These two commands will make geoSHELL switch a 128 to the desired screenmode 40 column or 80 column It s as simple as that Of course you can also use the switch command but if this is being done from a startup or exec file you may not always know which mode the computer is going to be in switch is a toggle function while s80 and s40 will definitely set a specific mode From the immediate mode the easiest way to switch screens is by using the ALT key There are no parameters required for these comm
22. and followed by another command on the same line to perform the job of opening a different drive and perform a command on that drive You can even end this line with a command to reopen your original drive to return to where you were always This command is only used in a startup file or an exec file It has a simple purpose When geoSHELL finds this command in a startup or exec file any commands that follow it will be executed This essentially cancels the effect of the onboot command Refer to the onboot command for more information No parameters are required for this command basic This command does exactly as expected It will take you out of GEOS and retum you to the Basic mode of your computer On the 64 you can perform various functions such as running a Basic program and then return to GEOS by pressing the RESTORE key On the 128 GEOS does not always do a clean exit to Basic Sometimes by going into the MONITOR and then typing G 1C000 will get you back into GEOS Sometimes it doesn t work 128 GEOS leaves some vectors in a state that docs not allow certain functions to operate properly unfortunately in some cases il is necessary to reboot No parameter is required for this command boot This command works only on a 128 If the current drive contains a valid boot disk you will leave the GEOS environment and the disk will be booted If the disk is not bootable you will be informed as such and nothing wi
23. ands slowdir This command will tell geoSHELL to display other information along with the filenames whenever you are issuing a directory command You would use this if you need to view information besides just the filenames The info that can be displayed is the filetype the filesize and the date and time that each file was created or last modified There is no parameter required for this command startup This command by itself will execute the startup file that is residing on the current drive if there is one If you supply a number from 2 9 it will execute the corresponding page from the startup file The startup file must be named Startup with a capital S 35 Chapter 6 Resident Commands Refer to Chapter 5 for more info on using startup files and exec files Status This command will display the current status of your drives It will show you the drives that are currently online and the disks that are in them The type of drive is also displayed This command is handy since it is easy to forget which drive is which if you do any swapping around There is no parameter required for this command switch This command is a toggle command It will switch the 128 back and forth between 40 and 80 column modes You might only need to use this in a startup file or an exec file since it is easier to just hit the ALT key from the immediate mode You could also include this command in a function ke
24. at is on the current drive Refer to Chapter 9 for more info on this command This command requires no parameter Ay Chapter 8 Function Keys Chapter 8 The Programmable Function Keys geoSHELL gives you the ability to use the function keys You may usc the default settings or you may also assign your own settings to the function keys Programming a function key is very simple You assign whatever command or multiple command sequence you would like by first typing in one of eight commands representing the desired function key followed by the desired sequence of commands Ilere s an example key3 date time dir The first command tells geoSHELL which key to assign the string of commands that follows key3 of course would indicate the F3 key The three commands following key3 in our example are then assigned to the F3 key Now anytime you press F3 you will be given the date and the time followed by a directory listing from the currently active drive If you type in the command key geoSHELL will display all eight function key definitions From this point you can easily change one of the function key definitions by cursoring up to one of them Just make whatever change you need and hit RETURN This is handy for making small changes to an existing sequence of commands Function keys may be programmed from within a startup file Whenever you exit an application to return to geoSHELL the startup fil
25. board Chapter 4 Using The Keyboard It is easy to adapt to geoSHELL for various rcasons One reason is the use of the keyboard Before GEOS came along we were all accustomed to using the keyboard for most of our activities geoSHELL is more keyboard oriented than most other programs in GEOS When typing you are always in insert mode Any characters to the right of the current cursor position are moved to the right until they mect the right side of the window The CLR HOME and SHIFTED CLR HOME Keys From Basic we clear the screen with the SHIFTED CLR HOME combination This does the same thing with geoSHELL Try it and you ll scc the geoSHELL window clear itsclf and Icave the cursor blinking in the upper left corner with the active drive listed The CLR HOME key by itself moves the cursor to the upper left of the window without clearing it The RETURN CMDR RETURN ENTER and UP DOWN Cursor Keys The cursor keys are a little different The UP DOWN cursor keys move the cursor up or down one line at a time The cursor gets placed at the end of each line that it comes to This allows you to hit RETURN and repeat previous commands that you typed in or to load and run programs from a directory listing The RETURN key is important Hitting RETURN causes geoSHELL to look at the line that it was on and to interpret what it sees Remember this Don t use RETURN to move down to the next line unless you want the commands on the linc to exccutc You
26. can use the UP DOWN cursor keys to move up or down or you can also use the CMDR RETURN combination to ignore the line and move to the next line down This will cause the next line to erase clean and be ready for new commands The UP DOWN keys will not erase the line The ENTER key on the 128 serves the same function as the RETURN key does 14 Chapter 4 The Keyboard The LEFT and RIGHT Cursor Keys The LEFT and RIGHT cursor keys work the command linc memory that geoSHELL has geoSHELL remembers the last ten command lines that were entered Maybe you mispelled a command or a filename Just hit CURSOR LEFT to redisplay the line and then correct vour typing CURSOR LEFT moves backward through memory and CURSOR RIGHT moves forward This can save a lot of typing when you use similar command sequences over and over or when you just wish to repeat a previously entered command The CONTROL STOP and NO SCROLL Keys Whenever geoSHELL is scrolling through something such as a directory listing or a text file you may use the CONTROL key to pause the listing as long as you keep holding the key down On the 128 you can press the NO SCROLL key to pausc the listing until another keypress is made with any key The STOP key will stop the listing and cxit the entire command line execution The STOP key will also exit a command line execution between multiple commands if pressed The DELETE Key DELETE works as you would expect DELETE will delete the
27. come an internal transient command For this to work the desired command must be first copicd to the drive that geoSHELL is on Then open the drive containing geoSHELL and issue the command internal followed by the name of the desired command that is to be altered Example fcopy b color80 b internal color80 This example assumes drive B contains gcoSHELL You are copying color80 to drive B and then putting color80 into the geoSHELL file that resides on drive B There may be commands released from time to time that must remain in thc form in which they are supplied In other words a command may not work unless it resides in it s own file as an external transient The documentation supplied with a command should detail this The commands supplied with the geoSHELL program disk can all be moved to an internal state learn This command actually creates another command when you use it When you use CONFIGURE to set up your drives your are actually getting the disk drivers into the system that are stored within the CONFIGURE file CONFIGURE handles all of the drudgery for you So with a different driver for each type of drive and the possibility that new drivers may be written for each drive type from time to time it would be impossible for geoSHELL to supply drivers for your drives Besides you already have the drivers in your possession The learn command provides a means for fetching those drivers and creating a command
28. command after using the rgb command The colors that arc used in monochrome mode are established with the preference manager This command requires no parameter onboot This command would be used in a startup file It s purpose is to separate certain commands in the startup file that resides on your boot disk Once geoSHELL sees the onboot command in a startup file it will cxecute any commands that follow it only during the initial booting of GEOS Once geoSHELL or the DeskTop has loaded for the first time the onboot command will inform geoSHELL to ignore any commands that follow it should that same startup file be exccutcd at any other time during your session The importance of this command is that there may be a sequence of commands that you only want executed when you first bootup There is no reason to reinstall an input driver once it has been donc for the first timc for instance Or you might have a series of copy commands executed when you first bootup in order to fill your ramdisk with the files you are going to work on Why copy them again In order to cancel the effect of the onboot command you would use the command always Any commands in between these two commands will only be executed during the initial bootup Any command after always will be executed at anytime You may have as many onbuot and always commands as you wish in a startup file There is no parameter required with this command
29. d let your initial onboot startup file install the fourth drive for you Example insta 11581 128 c This would make a 1581 that is drive 10 be recognized by GEOS on a 128 system Example installRM71 64 d This would make your REU emulate a RAM_1571 as drive D on a 64 The ramdisk can be installed in any drive position A through D as long as there are no other drives being used in the desired position 53 Chapter 7 Transient Commands If you are installing a CMD device it is always a good idea to immediately follow with a change partition command so that the DOS in the drive and GEOS are working in the same partition as follows Example installHD8i 128 b cp10 This climinatcs any problems you might encounter with the built in DOS wedge In the case of a ramdisk driver on a device that is capable of having several ramdisks or partitions such as an expanded REU or a BBG ram with scveral partitions you can rename the installxxxx 128 or installxxxx 64 command to any name you wish to reflect the particular portion of the REU that is being used With a little thought you can install more than one ramdisk on the same device Keep in mind however that there can only be one RAM_1581 in use at any one time Let s say you are using a BBG ram with 5 1571 partitions Use the learn command on each partition but rename the created commands before using learn on the next partition et s assume now that you have named the c
30. define a function key to do absolutely nothing To do this you would enter the command such as key6 without a parameter This would erase the existing definition for the corresponding key Then any time you press that key nothing will happen Make use of the power you have with the function keys they are provided as a means of preventing repetitious typing 58 Chapter 9 Hotkey Commands Chapter 9 The Built In Hotkeys What are the Hot Keys A hotkey is a combination of any two keys typed in from the keyboard to perform the function of loading and running an application or desk accessory They are provided to save a little typing when you wish to load a file This is just one more way that geoSHELL is user friendly A number of hotkey commands have already been defined for your use They are implemented for executing all of the popular programs that have been supplied for GEOS For instance simply enter the two letter combination wr and geoSHELL will search your drives for GEOWRITE If it is found then geoSHELL will load and run it pa will load and run GEOPAINT The built in hot keys are designed to be easy to remember You can have as many as 128 different hotkey definitions for the 128 and just as many for the 64 There is a storage area in the geoSHELL file for each computer This allows the user of both systems to have different hotkey definitions for each one When you enter a hotkey such as wr ge
31. disk Once you ve made a copy of geoSHELL you may continue on Like any other application in GEOS the first thing you need to do to run geoSHELL is to simply click on it s icon from the DeskTop Within a few moments geoS HELL will be loaded and displayed on your screen It s as simple as that geoSHELL is now in command of your machine instead of the DeskTop If you wish to return to the DeskTop simply click on the close button at the upper right comer of the gcoSHELL window With geoSHELL running you are now in a different type of user environment geoSHELL is waiting with it s cursor blinking for you to begin typing in commands Just in front of the cursor is a letter representing the drive that is the currently active drive Try entering the command dir which is short for directory Be sure to hit RETURN aftcr typing the threc letters What you will see now is a directory listing of all of the files that are contained on the disk While the DeskTop displays the files a page at a time with eight files to a page geoSHELLwill scroll through the whole directory all at once This is much like you would do it from Basic using a dos wedge command Now if you should see a particular application or desk accessory that you would like to try loading simply enter the name of the file and hit RETURN When you are ready exit your program by whatever means you normally would For instance from GeoWrite click on quit
32. e each command in the order that they are placed Now when you type in a command that requires a parameter tliat is not necessarily of a fixed length such as in the case of a filename geoSHELL needs a way to know where the end of the parameter is A terminator is used to end any command that uses a variable length parameter This terminator is the up arrow You will find the key for it just to the left of the RESTORE key Here is our previous example with a second eo it run photo manager date In this case the desk accessory called photo manager will run and after returning to geoSHELL you wall be given the current date If you failed to place the terminator in this example geoSHELL would have looked for a file called photo manager da Since a filename can never exceed 16 characters the te would have been ignored and your whole line entered would be wasted You wouldn t hurt anything by making this mistake other than waiting while geoSHELL makes a quick search for a non existant file geoSHELL will respond with photo manager da Not Available geoSHELL is smart but it can t read your mind entirely So don t forget to use the up arrow terminator at the end of any variable length parameter if you are following it with another command on the same line If you are only entering one command on a line or if this command is the last one on a line then the terminator is not needed The end of
33. e is read and any commands found will be executed If you need your function keys programmed a certain way for certain disks simply define them in your startup files You can do it differently for cach different disk if you wish Of course if you forget how they are set just type in the command key to view the current definitions If geoSHELL either does not find any commands in the startup file to define the function keys then they will be set to the default setting as contained in geoSHELL itself You could even program one function key to pragram another or even itself when it is pressed If you would like to revert back to the default function key settings after they have 57 l i i 4 t Chapter 8 Function Keys been altered use the command defkey Whatever settings are contained within the geoSHELL file on disk will be used Or after redefining your function keys you can use the command custom to save your new settings to the geoSHELL file on the disk Refer tothe custom command in chapter 6 for more information There are many uses for the function keys as you will soon find out Program one of them to load and run your favorite Desk Accessory or Application or to execute your most used command sequence One thing to keep in mind is the length of the sequence that is allowed by geoSHELL You are limited to 80 characters foreach function key Of course you cannot exceed this limit from the immediate mode a
34. e would not be in the second position or the second from the last position of the filename The question mark is also used as a wildcard It takes the place of exactly one character dir ha This will display any four letter file that starts with ha and ends with any other two characters You can mix question marks and asterisks Wildcards are very handy if you name your files with similar names or if you want to find a file and can t remember exactly how itis spelled If you know the first letter just enter it followed by an asterisk Any number of question marks are allowed up to a maximum of 16 since a filename cannot exceed sixteen anyway Displaying by Filetype There is one more use for the command dir If you enter dir followed by a one or two digit number that represents a GEOS filetype you will display a directory of all the files of that type GEOS assigns a number to it s various filetypes For instance desk accessories are assigned a filetype of 5 So to list all of the DA s on the disk just enter dir 5 To help you to Icarn and remember all of the numbers that are assigned to the various filetypes they are listed whenever the directory is displayed next to the actual name that is given to that filetype For instance next to GEOWRITE 128 in a directory listing you will see 6 Applic This means that GEOWRITE 128 is an application file and the filetype of 6 represents the application fi
35. ediately executed The resident commands also have the advantage over transient commands of allowing you to type in an abreviated form of the command Anything from the first three characters up to and including the full name of the command is accepted For instance del will perform the same as delete Some commands require a parameter to be specified Whenever that parameter might be of a variable length you must end it with an up arrow terminator unless it is the last command on a line In that case the terminator is not necessary Here is a listing of cach command along with a description arranged in alphabetical order Examples are given for commands that require a parameter Some of the commands such as directory might already be described elsewhere in this manual In this case you will be referred to that portion of the manual a b c or d These four commands have the simple job of sclccting a drive to be the currently active drive As soon as you enter a letter a b c or d followed by a colon you are telling geoSIIELL to open that drive If the desired drive is onlinc and properly installed you will be presented with the corresponding letter at the left side of the geoSHELL window followed by a right angle bracket and the familiar blinking cursor If for some reason geoSHELL is unable to open that drive you will be told that it is unavailable Chapter 6 Resident Commands You can use this comm
36. een the command and it s parameter geoSHELL loads faster than the DeskTop for various reasons It doesn t have to load in the icons and display them whenever opening a disk or flipping to another directory page In fact geoSHELL doesn t even read a disk directory until it is told to do so This allows you to insert a different disk into the drive at any time With the DeskTop you always have to open the disk whenever inserting a new one geoSHELL allows you to find a file on the disk faster than the DeskTop can because you simply type in the filename and hit RETURN and geoSHELL will load and run the file for you If it is not found on the active drive then any other drive that is on your system will be searched as well With the DeskTop you have to scarch through each page of files until you find the one you want and then double click on it s icon This is OK if the desired icon is already displayed on the screen but if you have to search your ot her drive it takes a few moments Unfortunately some of us computer users no longer have the patience we once had Now don t get me wrong the DeskTop is a very good piece of software It has an abundance of features and is very easy to comprehend and use It was well written and has very few bad points But the GEOS world has been without any form of interface that gets the user more on an even level with his machine Now there is geoSHELL You now have added capabilities all built into
37. en finished it will exit back to geoSHELL Here s an example print mydatafile This will print a file called mydatafile and then return to geoSHELL when finished 33 Chapter 6 Resident Commands Your current printer driver will be used for this purpose rename This command allows you to rename a file All you have to do is supply the new filename that you desire and the current name of the file that you wish to rename This will only work on the currently active drive Here s an example rename newfile oldfile This will look for oldfile on the drive and if it is found it will be renamed to newfile Notice that you must use an sign in between each filename Use only the sion with no extra spaces unless the spaces are contained within either of the filenames rgb This command only works with the 128 while in 80 column mode You need a color monitor for this command to look appropriate on the screen It will switch the 128 into a nice looking multi color mode If you wish you can use the command color80 to alter the colors to suit your own taste The command custom will also save your new settings if you d like No parameters are required for this command root This command works when using native partitions on CMD devices such as the HD or RamLink The root command will take you to the root directory of the current partition you are in If you are m any subdirectory you c
38. es that are displayed in a directory listing you will see some additional information on each file when you display a directory The type of file in an abbreviated form is displayed along with the approximate size of the file plus the date and time it was created or last modified On the 80 column screen of the 128 there is room for all of this info to be displayed for each file But on the 40 column screen of the 128 and on the 64 only the filename the filetype and the filesize will be displayed If you wish to see the date and time for the file you must enter the command ddate Now you will be able to view the date and timc and not the filetype Chapter 2 The Directory or size If you wish to go back to viewing the filetype and size again use the command dtype Both of these commands will serve no purpose on the 80 column screen of the 128 However if you issue one of these then it will be in effect when you switch to the 40 column screen The fastdir and slowdir Commands Now let s say that you have an extremely large amount of files on your disk and you don t have to be bashful because geoSHELL has no limit on the number of files that are allowed on a disk The only limit is the disks own dircctory For instance the 1581 disk drive is capable of having 296 directory entries but the DeskTop will only access the first 144 of them geoSHELL will access all of them If a hard drive is capable of holdin
39. f charge A bug is considered to be a flaw that causes a crash of your system or data corruption of a disk or the screen appearance Incompatibilites with certain hardware features can not be considered a bug although every effort has been taken to insure that this program will work with any hardware setup that can be run in the GEOS environment Wheels 64 and Wheels 128 are products and trademarks of Click Here Software Co GEOS 64 and GEOS 128 are products and trademarks of Berkeley Softworks deskTop is a product of Berkeley Softworks Commodore 64 and 128 are products of Commodore Business Machines RamLink HD Series and FD Series are products of Creative Micro Designs RamDrive is a product of Creative Micro Designs and Performance Peripherals gateWay is a product of Creative Micro Designs a wn Table Of Contents An Introduction To geoSHELL 2 Getting Started With geoSHELL 4 Setting Up Your Boot Disk Setting Up Your Workdisks Entering Commands Using Multiple Commands Working With The Directory Load And Run Files Using The Keyboard CLR HOME and SHIFTED CLR HOME Keys RETURN CMDR RETURN ENTER and the UP DOWN Cursor Keys LEFT and RIGHT Cursor Keys CONTROL STOP and NO SCROLL Keys DELETE and INSERT Keys The ALT Key HELP Key SHIFT RUN Key Combination The Numerical Keys LEFT ARROW Key UP ARROW and CMDR UP ARROW Keys The Startup File 19 What Is A Startup File Creating A Startup File The oxec Command
40. file which changes its write protect status Example lock filename mono resident Switch the 128 to monochrome mode E onboot resident Used only in a startup file Commands that follow will execute only during initial bootup output resident Display the filename of the current printer driver parent resident Move up one directory in a native partition path external transient Define your path partition or display the current one Example path Example path h2 peode external transient This will send control codes to your serial printer or interface The parameters used must be ascii representations of numbers from 0 through 255 with a space between each number Example pcode 27 64 pconf external transient Define your printer settings for the P command or display the current ones Example pconf Example pconf 47ya print resident Print a data file Example print filename an Chapter 11 Command Summary ptype resident Display a PETASCII text file Example ptype filename remove external transient Remove a drive from the system Example remove rename resident Rename a file This works only on the active drive Example ren newfilename oldfilename rgb resident Switch the 128 s 80 column screen into multi color mode root resident Move to the root directory if in a native partition rte external transient Sct your GEOS clock from the rte chip i
41. g it s own commands from the path partition as needed getshell has the advantage of only being less than 2K in size and so it takes up very little room on each partition and disk To establish your path you simply use the command path followed by a parameter that specifies the path Here s an example path h3 This will make the hard drive the default path device with partition number 3 as the path partition If you use an FD series drive you would substitute an F in place of the DY in the parameter For a RamLink or a RamDrive use an r It s as simple as that You only have to specify a path one time during your session It is in effect until you turn the computer off For this reason it would be handy to specify it in your boot startup file Of course you can change it at any time Also the path is not established 63 i D i i l l i Chapter 10 Special Features until it is issued For this reason geoSHELL must be on your boot disk since it must be loaded before the path command can be used If you wish to view your current path just issue the command by itself without a parameter Your current setting will then be displayed Some of the geoSHELL commands themselves will also fetch information or data from the path partition The help command will read the helpfile from the path partition if it is there The exec command will also check the
42. g several thousand files in it s directory geoSHELL can access every single one of them The reason is because geoSHELL doesn t store the directory in memory It reads it as it needs to And it does it quickly You won t see any pause when changing disks with gcoSHELL Now with a large amount of files ia your directory you may want to scroll through the directory a little faster You can do this by entering the command fastdir Now any time you view a directory you will only see the filenames without thc additional information In many cases this is all you will need To switch back to viewing the information along with the filenames use the command slowdir Using dir with Wildcards The command dir can be used in a couple of other ways also dir can call up a selective directory Enter dir followed by a partial filename containing one or more wildcards Here s an example dir g This would display all the files that begin with the letter g dir g This would display all the files that end with the letter g You can use one or two asterisks to represent wildcard characters The asterisk takes the place of one or morc characters If you enter dir m t e you will display any file that starts with m has a t Chapter 2 The Directory somewhere in the middle and ends with an c Remember that the asterisk represents one or more characters so that the t in this exampl
43. geoSHELL user s manual seoSHELL V2 2 user s manual program and manual are Copyright c 1992 2000 by Maurice Randall All Rights Reserved Second Edition First Printing November 2000 Created using GeoWrite running in Wheels 128 and or Wheels 64 Formatted and printed on a PostScript laser printer using PostPrint 3 All operations were performed with either a Commodore 64 or 128 No part of this manual nor the program nor any files on the program disk may be copied or duplicated in any manner cxcept for the registered owners own backup or archival purposes Anyone not abiding by this ts not only hurting the author by lost revenucs but also hurting all GEOS users by not encouraging the author to continue development of this and other programs Warranty The original program disk is watrantecd for a period of 12 months from the date of purchase It is not copy protected so you are encouraged to make backup copies for your own use and to prevent the loss of the program should the original become damaged or corrupted Bug Warranty This program is also warrantecd for life to be bug free By this if you should find any definite bugs or programming flaws in the original unmodified version of this program you are encouraged to report the bug The author will promptly fix the bug and release an updated version of the program with credit for the bug discovery going to you You of course will receive a copy of the new version free o
44. his will copy from the active drive source to drive B 42 k es e e es Hee a z N Gee Chapter 7 Transient Commands dcopy a4 This will copy to drive A partition number 4 if drive A is a CMD device and if partition 4 is compatible with not only the source drive but also the currently open partition on the destination drive In the case of copying to a partition the source and destination drives are allowed to be the same device The only stipulation of course would be the source and destination partitions must be different but of the same type defkey This command will rcload your default function key definitions from the current drive if geoSHELL is residing on it If not then it will search the other drives until it finds geoSHELL and load them from there You will use this command whenever you wish to revert back to your default function keys after you have redefined them You might want to refer to Chapter 8 for more info on the function keys No paramcter is required for this command exec This command functions much like the startup command and uses files that are created just as you would for a startup file One difference between an exec file and a startup file is an exec file can be given any filename desired Also the exec command will only execute commands from page one of an exec file Another difference is that a Startup file will only execute from the current drive whereas the cxec command will scarch
45. ick memory refresher The commands arc listed in alphabetical order with a very brief description and one or two examples if needed a b c or d resident Activate a drive always resident Used only in a startup file Commands following it are executed always atype internal transient View an ASCII text file Example atype filename backpatt external transient Change the background pattern Valid parameter is 0 31 Example backpatt 14 basic resident Exit GEOS and return to Basic boot resident Ona 128 this will exit to BASIC and boot the disk in the current drive if the disk contains a valid boot sector catalog resident This is the same as directory edir resident 66 i t l 4 y f i a e a eee E e aa Chapter 1 Command Summary View a directory according to a time parameter Example cdir Example cdir 0623p Example cdir 102292 elr resident Clear the geoSHELL window color80 external transient Set the colors on the 128 s 80 column color mode custom internal transient _ Save certain settings to make them your defaults date resident Display the current date or set the date Example date Example date 102392 deopy internal transient A whole disk copier Example dcopy b ddate resident Causes directories to display filenames with the date and time defkey internal transient Load the default function key definitions de
46. ined on one page You are limited to about 1500 characters depending on how you format your file Tabs and font changes will add to the size and take away from the number of commands that you can put into the file But in most cases you will find that you won t exceed the limit If you do geoSHELL will ignore the startup file and prompt you with a message that the startup file is too large geoSHELL allows additional startup sequences to be on pages two through nine of your startup file Page one of your startup file will always be executed unless you are holding down one of the number keys 2 through 9 when geoSHELL is activated Whatever key you hold down is the page that geoSHELL will look at If you would like the startup file to be ignored altogether hold down the zero key Do this if there are commands on the startup file that you do not wish to execute The exact point when geoSHELL is ready to load in the startup file is after the screen has been drawn and immediately after the copyright message appears Have the desired key held down before this or geoSHELL won t catch it if you are too late If you are too late it will ignore the key you are holding and go 0 right ahead and execute the first page of the startup file Once in awhile you might find yourself creating a fairly complex startup file There is a way to place comments within a startup file Anything enclosed inside a left and a right curly brace will be ignored by geoSHELL
47. is command is used primarily in startup files and exec files It s job is to display a message or string of characters to the screen All you have to do is supply the parameter and cnd it with an up arrow terminator There is no limit to the length of the parameter either echo will just keep echoing to the screen until it reaches the terminator Word wrap is performed at the end of each screen line also Your only limit on the length is the size of a startup or exec file that is allowed Here s an example echo Continue y n This would display the string Continue y n to the screen You might want to refer to the getkey command or the wait command for ways to put the echo command to effective use in creating a menu echo Using echo with just a terminator will cause a carriage return to be performed Use this to separate two different lines when displaying a message to the sereen 27 Chapter 6 Resident Commands end This command is used in a startup file or exec file When geoSIIELL sees this command it will immediately cease the executing of the startup or exec file and return you to the immediate mode Normally this command is not needed since geoSHEL1 will end the execution when it reaches the end of a startup or exec file So why have this command Well if you refer to the getkey command you will find that it can be used to terminate a portion of a startup or exec file when getkey is
48. is that when you type the name of the file the command will be executed instead In this case use the command run followed by the filename geoSHELL will then know to go and look for a file of that name and will not look for a corresponding command of the same name You can try to load any file that you may find on a disk If it is not ofa type that can be loaded and run geoSHELL will inform you so just as the DeskTop would If you enter the name of a data file geoSHELL will search for it s parent application and load it geoSHELL also accepts wildcards when you cater a filename For instance if you enter GEO This will cause geoSHELL to look for a file that starts with the three letters GEO If it finds one and chances are it will in this case it will Joad and run it for you gevSHELL will search all of the drives for a file when you enter a filename The currently active drive however takes priority and is searched first There are also other ways to load and run a file In other parts of this manual you will 12 Chapter 3 Load and Run Files learn how to define a hotkey command for loading a file Chapter 9 covers the information you will need to know about the hotkeys You can also define a function key to load and run a file You will find more information about the function keys in Chapter 8 a a yf b 4 preg kere r ee oe e cme eee nea A a i j N Chapter 4 The Key
49. ithin them for their own purpose such as a screen message Using type can be useful at times to view any text that might be contained within a program External Transient Commands These are the commands that have been supplied with the original geoSHELL disk and they can be found in their own separate files on disk In order to access any of these commands just make sure that they are on a disk that is in any one of your drives and then enter the name of the command geoSHELL will take care of fetching it for you From time to time there will be additional disks released that will contain new commands that you can add to your system They may also contain updated versions of existing commands backpatt This is a command that is used to change the appearance of your background screen Contained within the GEOS Kemal are 32 different patterns that are accessible for use by any GEOS application geoSHELL uses these patterns for the background You can choose the pattern you would like with this command and if desired use the command custom to save your defaults Here s an example backpatt 14 This will use pattern number 14 for your background Any number from 0 31 is valid color80 Now here is a command that might surprise you a little This one is for the 80 column 128 and allows you to sel multiple colors while working in geoSHELI For those 128 49 Chapter 7 Transient Commands users with a color monitor you c
50. keyboard The main intention of this command is to allow the user to set up a menu system with geoSHELL Refer to Chapter 5 for more info on this command input 29 Chapter 6 Resident Commands This command will display the filename of your current input driver The input driver is a little machine language routine that is stored in the GEOS kemal that controls the function of your mouse or your joystick This command is used to remind you as to what input driver you are currently using In most cases you would not need to use this command unless you frequently change input drivers You might want to refer to the install command for information on how to change input drivers No parameter is required with this command insert Here is a handy command for use in a function key definition This command will save you a lot of repetitious typing of the same string of commands in front of other commands or filenames First here s an example on how to set it up key7 insert fcopy b What we are doing here is defining function key 7 When the insert command is encountered geoSIIELL will insert the text that follows it at the current cursor position Any text following the current cursor position will be moved to the right In the case above the command fcopy b including a trailing space will be inserted at the cursor position All text up to the up arrow terminator is used Check out it s use in this example filena
51. keys refer to Chapter 8 load There will be times when you may want to use a transient command that is not on any of the disks that are presently sitting in your drives You could however just insert the disk with the command on it and then type in the command that you want But maybe you don t want to execute that command while that particular disk is in the drive For this reason we have the load command Enter load followed by the name of the command you wish to load and geoSHELL will load it into memory for you Now the next time you type the command that you just Inaded it will be executed Here s an example load type In this case maybe you didn t have geoSHELL anywhere on a disk that is in your drives The type command is an internal transient command that is contained within the geoSHIELL file load will fetch it into memory for you Now you would remove 31 Chapter 6 Resident Commands the disk and reinsert your previous one and then proceed to view any text files that you wanted to view with the type command The load command only works with geoSHELI commands and not with any application or desk accessory As long as the desired command is somewhere on one of the drives that are on your system you won t have to use this command mono This command is only for the 128 while in 80 column mode It switches the 128 into a monochrome mode which is the standard GEOS mode You would use this
52. le and you will get an idea as to what it does But what about those commands that are inside the curly braces Normally geoSHELL 2 Chapter 5 Startup File will ignore anything inside a curly brace and allow you to have comments placed there But getkey uses these for it s own purpose It will look at the left curly brace and see if the character that follows it is the same as the key that the user pressed If it finds a match then any commands that follow it will be passed on to gcoSHELL for processing So with this m mind the first command in our sample startup file is clr This will clear the geoSHELL window to make ready for any new text that we might want placed there The next command is echo It will print to the screen the message that follows it After that the command getkey is invoked Now the computer seemingly freezes It is waiting for you to press a key Once a key is pressed a search will begin The remainder of the startup file is searched for a left curly brace If one is found the character after it will be checked to see if it matches the keypress In our case here if the n key was pressed it will be found and the next command after it is end This will cause the startup or exec file to immediately cease and you will be returned to the immediate mode Now if the y key was pressed it would have been found and the following command tells geoSHELL to run GEOPUBLISH Since
53. lete resident Delete a file on the active drive directory resident Display a directory with or without wildcards Example dir Example dir G dtype resident Causes directories to display filenames with the filetype and size echo resident 67 Chapter 11 Command Summary Echo a message to the screen Example echo This message to the screen end resident Ends a startup or exec file exec intcrnal transient Execute a file of commands Example exec filename external external transient If used by itself this will display the external transient commands currently available to geoSHELL Or if followed by an internal transient command name it will turn that command into an external one The following example will change the info command into an external command on disk Example external info exit resident Return to the DeskTop fastdir resident Causes directories to display just the filenames feopy internal transient A filecopier Example icopy b filename format external transient Format a disk in the current drive Example format diskname geos resident Make a disk a GEOS disk getkey resident Wait for a keypress in a startup or exec file and then process the input help external transient Display a help screen from a file called helpfile Example help Example nelp subject 68 i l i i i f t f f f oan a Chapter 11 Comma
54. letype The cdir Command Let s assume you ve been working on your computer for a little while and you want to see the files that you have created today For this purpose geoSHELL has the command cdir Just think of this command as representing the current directory Enter cdir and all of the files that are dated for the present day will be displayed Using cdir With A Time Parameter Now cdir is a good command for viewing files that you have created or modified 10 Chapter 2 The Directory during the day if you arc a normal pcrson But most of us computer buffs are not necessarily normal Many of us are up late at night working past midnite on stuff So now you use the command cdir to view the directory of files that you have been working on and it only displays files that you have done since midnite Just add a parameter to cdir that corresponds to a particular time of day and all the files from that point on will be displayed Let s say for instance that you began your computing session at about 8 00 pm on a Thursday night t is now past midnite cdir 0800p This will display all of the files created since 8pm geoSHELE will display from whatever time you enter within the last 24 hours if you use the command cdir followed by a time parameter You ll notice that you enter the time the same way as you would if you were entering the time to set the clock Using cdir with a
55. ll happen catalog 24 a t f Ta Chapter 6 Resident Commands For an explanation of this command refer to the direclory command in chapter 2 This command performs exactly the same as directory The reason for it s existence is that some people have become accustomed to using catalog instead of directory For the same reason you may also use the dollar sign in place of directory or catalog Don t confuse the dollar sign with the DOS wedge command When used following an it performs a directory listing that is slightly different Refer to the DOS wedge commands for more information cdir You will want to familiarize yourself with this command as you will find many uses for it The job of edir is to display a current directory There are also three types of current directories You can display the files that were created during the current day by using the command without any parameters Or if you supply a time for a parameter you will be given a directory of files that were created since that time during the previous 24 hours With a date parameter you will get a directory of files that are dated from that point and later Refer to chapter 2 for more information about this command clr This command is intended for use in a startup or exec file When geoSHELL sees this command it will clear the geoSHELL window and put the cursor at the upper left of
56. lso contributed many ideas that 1 incorporated into the program J also want to thank Berkeley Softworks GeoWorks for creating the GEOS operating system for the Commodore 64 and 128 If it weren t for GEOS I would have had no reason to write this program My biggest gratitude goes to my wife Brenda She put up with the many hundreds of hours that I sat plopped in front of the computer working on this program Maurice Randall Maurice Randal Trick Here Software Co F O Box 606 Charlotte Mi 23813
57. me Here 1s a filename in a directory listing Go to this line by either clicking once on it to place the cursor at the start of the line or by using the cursor keys to move to the line and then hit the left arrow key at the upper left of your keyboard This will also place the cursor at the start of the linc Now hit F7 fcopy b filename This is what you will get after hitting F7 feopy b is inserted in front of the desired filename Now you can merely hit the RETURN key to execute this command line There are many other uses for insert in addition to this example As time goes on 30 i t Chapter 6 Resident Commands you will discover your own ideas for it s use key This is a simple command that will display your current function key defintions for you If you change your definitions from time to time vou might not always remember how they are set This command is used to remind you No parameter is required with this command key1 key2 key3 key8 These eight commands allow you to redefine your function keys They of course require a parameter in order to do so If you do not specify a parameter the corresponding key will do nothing when pressed You can define a function key to perform your most used commands and will find that using them becomes second nature You will use them all of the time and it is to your advantage to do so For more information on redefining your function
58. mmands format This command allows you to format a disk drive In it s present version il will only work with the three CBM drives the 1541 1571 and 1581 All you need to do to use it is to specify a name for the disk Here s an example rormat diskname This will then begin to format the disk that is in the currently active drive As soon as the format process is finished the disk will be madc into a GEOS disk and then it will 50 i i j l f i co ae se eE a Chapter 7 Transient Commands be donc Now when using this command with a 1571 drive the default is to format a disk as a double sided disk You can cause this command to only format onc side of the disk however You would do it like this format 1 diskname This will create a disk that can be properly read by a 1541 disk drive Another way to format a disk is with the DOS wedge command that geoSHELL provides But if you do it with the DOS wedge you would want to use the command gcos in order to make it a GEOS disk Refer to Chapter 6 for more info on the DOS wedge help This command will provide the user with a means to view a helpfile on the screen Contained within this helpfile are numerous subjects pertaining to geoSHELL and it s use The bulk of the helpfile describes the commands To access this helpfilc simply type help You will now be presented with the initial help screen From here you can request additional
59. n 3 as the destination partition It makes no difference as to which drive is the currently active drive in this case the destination will be whatever you specify In this case it is partition 3 on the hard drive The only time this won t work is if partition 3 on the HD is the current partition on the currently active drive Tf you have an FD Series floppy drive you would use an f to specify the destination drive For a RamLink or RamDrive use an r Always follow this with the desired partition number Of course the partition must be of the same type as you are currently using on that particular device You can t open a native partition if you are using 1581 partitions and vice versa fcopy requires two drive devices except in the duplicate mode or when copying from partition to partition It is unable to copy a file from one disk to another on a single drive system It was felt that this would require too much disk swapping and was not implemented For copying with single drive systems you should use the DeskTop since it uses a larger buffer in the computer thereby requiring fewer disk swaps It is still an uncomfortable process however info You can use info to display uscful information about a file Every GEOS file has what is known as a header block attached to it Within this header block on the disk is various bits of info such as the type of file the author of the file efc If the file requested is a data filc i
60. n a series of exce files together Just end each file with an exec command that calls another file in There is no limit to how many can be chained together This might be useful for a demo or text presentation of some sort From within an exec file you could call the type command to display a text file for someone to read As time goes on you will find many uses for the exec command Here s an example exec filename The parameter required is the filename of the file you wish to load In this cxample the requested file called filename will be loaded and executed provided it is in a GeoWrite format The getkey Command Supplied on your geoSHELL program disk is a transient command called getkey This command was written to give the user a means for creating his own menus within the geoSIIELL window We re not talking about the drop down menu that you normally see at the top of a geoSHELL program This would be a menu that appears within the geoSHELL window The command is intended to be used within a startup or exec file When geoSHELL sees this command it will stop right there and wait for the user to press a key At this point it is similar to the wait command This allows a startup file or exce file to jump to a specific spot should the user press a specific key Tere is a sample startup file clr echo Load GeoPulish Y N getkey n end y run GEOPUBLISH Study the commands in this startup fi
61. n the current drive run resident Load and run a file Example run filename Example run file s40 resident Switches the 128 to 40 column mode s80 resident Switches the 128 to 80 column mode savekeys external transient Save your new hotkey settings to the geoSHELL file on the current drive slowdir resident Causes directories to display filenames plus additional info startup resident Execute a startup file Example startup Jl Chapter Command Summary Example startup 5 status resident Display the drives that are currently online stype resident Display a text file that is stored in Commodore screencode Example sty pe filename swap internal transient Swap drives Example swap ac switch resident Switch the 128 back and forth between 40 and 80 columns time resident Display the time or set the time Example time Example time 0834a type internal transient Display any type of text file Example type filename wait resident This works only in a startup filo It waits for the user to hit any key n i A Special Thanks want to thank you for purchasing this software for your Commodore computer An extreme amount of work went into developing it I hope you enjoy using it as much as enjoyed creating it want to thank John Lindemann and Ron Gearhart for their excellent testing of geoSHELL as it developed from one stage to another They a
62. nd Summary hotkey external transient Define your hotkey settings or display the current ones Works in conjunction with savekeys Exampie hotkey Example hotkey pa GFOPA iNT infa internal transient Display various bits of info about a file Example info filename input resident Display the name of the current input driver internal cxtcrnal transient fused by itsclf this will display the internal transient commands currently available to geoSHELL Or if followed by an external transient command name it will tum that command into an internal one The following example will change the hotkey command into an internal command contained within the geoSHELL file Example external hotkey insert resident Insert a string of characters at the current cursor position install internal transient Install a printer or input driver Example install 128 COMM 1351 a Example install Nx1000 key resident Display the function Key definitions keyl resident Redefine a function key Also use key2 key3 etc CMDR UP ARROW required as a terminator when other commands follow Example key3 insert fcopy b learn external transient Create a disk driver command such as install41 64 Example learn b 69 Chapter 11 Command Summary load resident Load a transient command into memory without executing it Example load backpatt lock external transient This command will lock or unlock a
63. nfo will display the parent file that this data file belongs to such as GeoWrite being a parent to one of it s data files Applications and desk accessories have the author s name stored within the header block Info gt displays this also Info will check the date in the directory that goes with this file and display it for you Also contained within the header block is a memo about the file This memo may have been created by the orginal author of the file or it might be a memo that you added yourself info filename Just as in this example you merely supply the filename and geoSHELL will then display the available information for that file install 4 Chapter 7 Transient Commands The command install has two purposes It is used to install either a printer driver or an input driver Whenever you wish to change one of these drivers you would use this command You would also want to include this command in your startup file on your boot disk Otherwise GEOS defaults to the joystick Also your printer driver would not be installed unless you do this Thc DeskTop accomplishes the same thing by installing the first printer driver and input driver it finds on the disk With geoSHELL you specify the same operation in your startup file As an example install NX1000 This would install the file named NX1000 and make it your default printer driver Of course you would specify whichever printer driver you your
64. nto geoSHELL is due to a few very special commands One is P This command is intercepted and not really sent to th drive It will cause your screen output to now also g0 to the printer This i is a toggle command The next time you enter it output will go only to the screen You canasetho peonf command toiset various settings so that it will work properly with your printer Refer to Chapter 7 for more info on the pconf comm and Another very handy DOS wedge command is CP This command by itself will tell you the current partition that is being used on a CMD device If you wish you can include a partition number such as in this example CP3 This will now open partition number three if it is of the same type as the current 38 Ea E a e ai oo Jo S na eee ae a ae Chapter 6 Resident Commands partition If not you will be told so Another DOS wedge command is P This will display a directory of partitions The beauty of this command is that you may then cursor up to the partition that you wish to open and hit RETURN or just double click on the desired one and it will be opened If you refer to your CMD manual you will also see how you can use wildcards when viewing a partition directory Most all of the commands that are in your CMD manual will work with geoSHEL s DOS wedge Experiment with the ones you might use most You will find many uses for this DOS wedge once you try it
65. nyway However from a startup file you could But geoSHELL will catch it quit executing the startup file and report the error This error might also be caused if you should happen to forget to include the terminator at the end of the function key definition Unless a function key definition is the last thing in your startup file you have to terminate it with the CMDR UP ARROW Notice this terminator is not the usual UP ARROW but the CMDR UP ARROW With this terminator geoSHELL knows where the end of your definition is and will once again begin executing commands following the definition In 80 column mode on the 128 your limit is 73 characters On the 64 or the 128 in 40 column mode this limits you to 33 characters These limits are due to the amount of characters that will fit on a line in the geoSHELL window For most purposes this is adequate Remember if you need the full 80 allowed ca use either a startup file or an exec file to define the functions key If you should happen to have a function key definition that contains more characters than can be entered from the immediate mode do not try to edit it from the immediate mode or you will actually shorten it to the maximum of 33 characters 40 column mode or 73 characters 80 column mode without realizing it You can view the definition at least a portion of it but you won t want to edit it unless you wish to shorten it anyway There may be times when you might want to
66. oSHELL first must find the list of hotkeys in the geoSHELL file If it finds the hotkey that you typed it will then search for the corresponding file So for this rcason geoSHELL must be on one of the disks in any of your drives The hotkey and savekeys Commands There is a transient command supplied on your geoSHELL program disk that allows you to view your current hotkey settings This command is called hotkcy This command also has the ability to define new hotkeys Or you can use it to redefine existing ones or to even erase existing ones It is quite versatile Viewing Your Current Hotkey Settings 59 i i l A i Chapter 9 Hotkey Commands In order to view your current hotkey setings simply type the command hotkey by itself without any parameter You will be presented with a list of hotkey definitions that will scroll on your screen As usual you can use the CTRIL key to pause the listing and STOP to abort it Using hotkey by itself has no effect on your current settings It merely lets you view them Changing Your Hotkey Settings The command hotkey will let you redefine your hotkey settings if you supply a parameter with it The best way to explain how to do this is with an example hotkey wr GEOWRITE Of course this one is not necessary since we already had GEOWRITE defined but it is being shown for this example since we are all familiar with this p
67. ommand will delete a file from the currently active drive It will not scarch through the other drives for the file This prevents the possibility of accidentally deleting a file that you did not intend to delete You must supply a filename for a parameter If the file is found on the disk it will be promptly eliminated from the disk delete filename This example will delete a file named filename If you wish you could supply a parameter containing wildcards delete filce This would look for the first file that begins with file and delete it if found Only the first occurence of the filename will be deleted This does not allow you delete a series 26 p nas 1 H Chapter 6 Resident Commands of files that all match the wildcard selection It was felt that there might be times when this would be undesirable so this feature was left out directory This command is used to display a directory of the disk that is in the current drive For a more thorough cxplanation of it s use refer to chapter 2 dtype Don t confuse this command with the type command This command affects the way directories are displayed on a 40 column screen It stands for display type So therefore whenever you are viewing a directory you will see the filenames followed by the filetype and size of each file The command ddate performs the opposite of this command No parameter is required for this command echo Th
68. ommands partl part2 etc Once you have done this with each of the five partitions you can now change partitions right from geoSIJELL without the use of a separate utility All you have to do is use remove in conjunction with your new commands Fxampie remove b part2 This example removes drive B from the system but the rest of the command line reinstalls the BBG ram with partition 2 being opened It s as simple as that The best way to use the BBG ram would be to have geoSHELL and all of it s commands in one of the five partitions and that partition could be installed as drive D Then any of your other partitions could be used as drive A B or C or a combination of two or three of them geoSHELL allows you to have as many as four partitions open at once but you might want to keep at least one floppy running as onc of the devices lock This command will cither set or clear the write protect bit of a file It is a toggle function If the file is already write protected this command will unlock the file A locked file cannot be overwritten or deleted under normal circumstances Only the currently active drive is searched for the desired file Example lock filename 34 Ce eee Spee ee ee ee ee a Chapter 7 Transient Commands This will toggle the write protect status of the desired file path This command will come in very handy to those who use a device made by Creative Micro Designs It works with either the hard d
69. one piece of software that coupled with your favorite icon type interface such as the DeskTop makes working with GEOS much more enjoyable geoSIELL may also be referred to as a CLI or command line interface But once you start using geoSHELL you will find that it is much friendlier than most any other CLI for any type of computer Read through the rest of this manual and become familiar with the many features and commands that geoSHELL posesses Don t be intimidated by any part of this manual or by geoSHELL itself You don t have to know everything there is to know about it in order to begin using it The structure of the manual is such that you are taken a step at a time in learning how to use this program You will find yourself becoming accustomed to it s use very quickly Just think in terms of the DeskTop when you are issuing a command in geoSHELL and you will understand what you wish to accomplish and what is taking place So continue on and explore the world of GEOS through the use of geoSHELL Chapter 1 Getting Started Chapter 1 Getting Started With geoSHELL Before you use gcoSHELL for the first time copy it to another disk Refrain from using your original disk that geoSHELL was supplied on From the DeskTop copy the file called geoSHELL to one of your workdisks For now you wont need any of the other files from the geoSHELL disk Become familiar with using the program and then check out the rest of the
70. opy it to your boot disk This is the best way to use it since it will automatically run when you first boot up GEOS This is not absolutely necessary since you can double click on geoSHELL from the DeskTop at any time And likewise you can exit geoSHELL to return to the DeskTop or whatever interface you loaded geoSHELL from at any time There are some things to understand when copying geoSHEI to your bootdisk First of all geoSHELL is of a filetype known as AUTO EXEC An AUTO EXEC file is nothing morc than an application with one difference it will execute automatically from your boot disk when you first boot up GEOS There is another AUTO EXEC file on your boot disk that is important the CONFIGURE file There might be other AUTO EXEC files on your bootdisk also The thing to understand about these files is that the order in which they are placed is important They are executed in the order in which they are found on your bootdisk But remember that this only occurs when you first boot up Once geoSHELL is loaded no more AUTO EXEC files will be executed So for this reason make sure that geoSHELI is the last AUTO EXEC file in order on your boot disk Generally you will want CONFIGURE to be your first AUTO EXEC file This is because CONFIGURE is in charge of setting up your drives and ramdisks before the DeskTop first appcars or in this case before geoSHELL first appears The way to identify the filetype of a file would be to either look at
71. ou wish lo save to one of the other drives that geoSHELL is residing on you must open that drive and then enter savekeys again This does however allow you to use the command over and over again to save the hotkey table to any number of seoSHELL files You may also change disks in the current drive and issue the command again to a different disk There is one thing to keep in mind when using hotkey and savekeys These two commands are designed to work together If you were to use another transient command or one of the resident commands that uses the transient command memory area you would erase the hotkey table that you created and would be forced to start over savekeys will catch this and report that it can t find the hotkeys in memory Take advantage of this powerful feature of geoSHELL and define new hotkeys for all of your most used programs Make them easy to remember This is one way that geoSHELI makes life easier 6l TE 4 Chapter 10 Special Features Chapter 10 Special Features For CMD Devices geoSHELL has been designed to work with any type of disk device that is capable of being used with GEOS One of the main companies that is supporting the Commodore computer and the GEOS community with some cxccllent hardware is Creative Micro Designs They have an excellent line of HD Series hard drives FD Series 3 5 inch drives and the Raml ink and RamDrive units geoSHELL does not leave
72. parate settings with this command printer settings The command pcont sets these for you These settings are then used when using the P command function keys Your function key settings are also saved with custom Your hotkey settings can only be saved with the savekeys command The command custom has no effect on your hotkeys This command requires no parameter dcopy This is a whole disk copier meaning that it does not copy individual files by themselves but it copies individual sectors on the disk that contain valid data Since every file on the disk is stored as valid data then every file will be copied with this method Using dcopy to copy every file from onc disk to another is much faster than copying cach file one at a time This is a two drive copier Both drives must be of similar types One of the differences allowed is when copying to from a ramdisk Still the ramdisk must be of the same type as the real drive You are also allowed to copy from a single sided 1541 disk to a double sided 1571 disk The 1571 disk will still be double sided with half of it still available for copying additional files to it Only one parameter needs to be supplied when using this command You must specify the destination drive or the destination drive and partition if it is a CMD device If you do not specify a partition then the currently open partition will be used Here s one example dcopy b T
73. path partition for the desired exec file Other commands only work with the currently active drive or partition such as the type command Naturally the rename delete and custom commands only affect the current drive or partition The reason is because these commands write to the disk and you have more control as to what drive is affected by these commands The beauty of geoSHELL s multiple commands on a single line can let you change partitions perform a command there and then change back All of this from a single line of commands Use your imagination v when you wish to perform a series of commands There might be an occasion when you will want to tum n yout path of off This is very simple as in the following example 7 path off After executing this geoSHELL will no longer look at a partition that is not currently visible to the system In most cases however you will want to take advantage of this powerful feature of geoSHELL and leave it turned on all the time CMD has provided us with these fine products for our Commodore computers and geoSHELL has been provided to make us of these products Chapter 11 Command Summary Chapter 11 The Commands At A Glance This Chapter is designed to give you a quick look at all of the available commands that are used in geoSHELL For a more indepth discussion you may want to refer to other parts of this manual This is a good place to look for a qu
74. pecify most any allowable geoSHELL command and to have those commands execute whenever geoSHELL is activated such as upon exiting an application and returning to geoSHELL One of the many uses of the startup file would be to define your function keys You would do this if the default function key definitions that geoSHELL uses are not suited for your purpose If you put geoSHELL on your boot disk then you would want a startup file on your boot disk also In it you would include the commands to instal your input driver and your printer driver You might include various copy commands for setting up your ramdisk You can use the drive swapping commands for setting up your drive letter device number designations before you begin your work Creating a Startup File When you create your startup file be sure to name it Startup or geoSHELL will never find it When you write your startup file you are free to do it any way to like You can use any font you choose If you wish to use tabs for positioning commands or for indenting certain commands for clarity feel free to do so You can use as many 19 Chapter 5 Startup File spaces in between each command but you must use at least one space For commands that require parameters remember to only use one space between the command and it s parameter The same rules apply here as for the immediate mode There is a limit to how large your startup file can be First of all it must be conta
75. pret them and execute them if they form a valid command that 37 Chapter 6 Resident Commands the drive recognizes Here s another example as This will tell the drive to start sending a directory listing If it does geoSHELL will then display it to the screen If you have ever used a DOS wedge from Basic you have always sent commands without using the SHIFT key The drive expects the commands to be lower case letters unless you are including a filename of some sort within the command But the commands themselves are always lower case But we have a problem with this while working in GEOS GEOS is taking our input from the keyboard and converting it to ASCII characters instead of the PETASCH characters that the disk drive expects The difference is that a lower case GEOS charact r is a foreign language to a Commodore drive However an uppercase GEOS character is the same as a lower case Commodore character What this means is that when you use the DOS wedge you have to remember to press the SHIFT ey and enter an uppercase GEOS character as in the following S0 filename The 9i in this example stands for scratch You are telling the drive to scratch a file called filename If you typed a lower case s instead this would actually have been sent as a graphic character that the drive does not recognize and you will have gotten a SYNTAX ERROR l Now the beauty of the DOS wedge that is built i
76. rive the FD drives RamLink or RamDrive It allows you to specify a path partition for geoSHELL to look at when it searches for it s commands You will find more information about this command in Chapter 10 pcode This will send contro codes to your serial printer or interface The parameters used must be ascii representations of numbers frem 0 through 255 with a space hetween each number Example pcode 27 64 This is the code to resct most printers You can send as many codes as will fit on a command line or until an up arrow terminator is found You will find this command very useful for configuring your printer or interface for special functions in GEOS Example pcode 27 83 48 27 77 27 15 27 65 6 p dir p This example works on a Star NX 1000 and may also work on other printers as well It will set the printer for condensed clite superscripts and set the line spacing at 1 12 inch and then print the directory of your current drive in a very small print pcont This command stands for printer configuration It allows you to either view your current printer settings or to sct them to work with your printer Now this has nothing at all to do with your printer driver It sets up geoSHELL for use with the P command Whenever you usc P all output to the screen will also be directed to your printer Chapter 7 Transient Commands Some printers need different signals sent to them than others The settings
77. rogram Now hotkey can also erase a hotkey definition And it works very similar to the way you would erase a function key definition You merely enter the hotkey command followed by the two letters to be erased plus an equal sign and follow it with nothing Just like this hotkey wr Now GEOWRITE will no longer be loaded when we type the two letters wr Instead geoSHELL would look for a file called wr and would fail to find it We can redefine an cxisting hotkey command exactly the same way that we define a new one When you define a hotkey that already exists it will be replaced by the new definition Saving Your New Definitions The command hotkey can be used over and over to define any numbcr of hotkeys up to the maximum of 128 for the 64 and 128 for the 128 Just keep using the command until you have defined all of the hotkeys you need Every time you define a hotkey it pets added to a temporary table in memory The command that allows you to save this table to the geoSHELL file on disk is savekeys When you finished defining a new hotkey or a series of hotkeys just enter the command savekeys If savekeys is available on one of the disks in your drives geoSHELL will fetch it and execute it At 60 Chapter 9 Hotkey Commands that point savekeys will then save the new table of hotkeys to the geoSHELL file that is on the currently active drive It will not save to any other drive If y
78. s been set Ff it is not found there then it will search the rest of the drives If geoSHELL is still not found you will be informed as such and told to insert a disk with geoSHELL Entering Commands Once you have geoSHELL on the screen you will need to know a few rules that you must follow in order to use it s many features Fortunately geoSHELL is a very friendly user interface and there is very little to remember These rules apply mainly to how you enter a command or a series of commands Of course to enter a command you just type it in and hit the RETURN key Once the RETURN key is struck geoSHELL will analyze your input and perform the function that you desire Some commands are simple ones that are entered all by themselves and some require you to add a parameter to them Then there are some that work with or without a parameter For instance if you enter the command date geoSTTELL will respond by displaying the current date that is set in the GEOS kernal If you enter date along with a parameter that date recognizes then geoSHELL will set the date to the one that you specified in the parameter Whenever you enter a command followed by a parameter you must put exactly just one space between the command and parameter All the commands expect to find their parameters exactly one space after the command Here s an example run photo manager It is obvious as to what will happen when you bit RETURN after en
79. s commands that are listed mm your CMD manual will work while in geoSHELL Refer to chapter 7 under Internal Transient Commands to find out how the copy commands contained within geoSHELL allows you to copy files between partitions and also to copy whole partitions from one to another or to and from a floppy drive The path Command The path command should become a favorite among owners of CMD devices Especially those that have enough space to allow multiple partitions Contained within geoSHELL are some special routines that it uses whenever the user types in a transient command geoSHELL is capable of looking for it s commands on a partition that is predefined with the path command This allows you to keep geoSHELL and all of it s commands on just one partition instead of having to have a copy of the same files on each and every parlition It s almost like having an extension of thc computer s memory Yes you can have just one copy of geoSIIELL on your path partition and it will be used as though it is on every drive and partition on your system It is always available for your use The secret is to have a copy of the file called getshell on every partition that you usc as well as your ramdisk and any other drive that is online As long as GEOS can get to the file getshell then getshell will take care of getting peoSHELL loaded when needed Once geoSHELL is in memory then it has it s own routines for fetchin
80. screen that is stored in Commodore screcncode characters You however will find that you very rarely need to use this command since the type command can also display a screencode file You would only need to use this command on those rare occasions when type fails to properly identify the file it is displaying Refer to the type command for more info on this onc swap If you ve used at least three drives with the DeskTop then you are already familiar with this command This command allows you to swap drive C with cither A or B so that you may run your applications from A or B if they are presently residing on drive C geoSHELL however has a more powerful and useful swapping routine It allows you to also swap drive A with drive B thereby eliminating a couple steps that you would normally have to do if you did this with the DeskTop With the DeskTop you would first have to swap A with C then B with C and finally A and C again In addition to this you can swap a drive with a non existant one This has the same effect as renumbering a drive You must supply a parameter that has the two desired drive letters in it Here s an example swap ab This will swap drive A with drive B Now assuming you have three drives on your system look at this next example swap bd This would swap drive B with a non existant drive D You would now have drives A C and D on your system This feature was implemented for the p
81. self uses On a 64 you would want to make sure that your printer driver is on any disk that you do printing from On a 128 the printer driver stays loaded in the computer s memory and is always available install COMM 1351 This will install a mouse driver named COMM 1351 and will be used until you specify a different one install COMM 1351 date Notice that in the above example an up arrow was placed after the mouse driver s filename If another command is to follow the install command a terminator must be placed after the filename so that geoSHELL knows that you did not request a file named COMM 1351 date In the above example you wanted geoSHEL 1 to display the date after it was finished loading in the mouse driver You can change your input or printer drivers any time you wish Just issue this command and geoSHELL will look for the corresponding file and install it for you plype This command will display a text file to the screen that is stored as PETASCII characters You however will find that you very rarely need to use this command since the type command can also display a PETASCII file You would only need to use his command on those rare occasions when type fails to properly identify the tile it is displaying Refer to the type command for more info on this one 46 et er ae d a o o Chapter 7 Transient Commands stype This command will display a text file to the
82. t the rest of your filename The UP ARROW is also used to terminate the echo command s parameter The CMDR UP ARROW is only uscd when you are defining a function key You would use it to terminate the function key definition You do not use the UP ARROW as a terminator here because it can be used as a terminator within the function key definition at the end of a filename If the function key definition is the last command on the line then the terminator is not needed By the same token if a command that uses a filename is the last command in a function key definition the UP ARROW terminator is not required Chapter 5 Startup File Chapter 5 The Startup File First of all the use of a startup file is optional geoSHELI can operate totally without it However it may be to your benefit to use one on each of your workdisks If you like until you become thoroughly familiar with geoSHELL you can keep your startup files simple What is a Startup File A startup file is a GcoWrite file that you create with GeoWrite of course It is appropriately named Startup on your disk notice the capital S You can create different startup files for different disks depending on your particular needs A startup file contains the startup sequence that is a maximum of one GeoWrite page in length Any one of pages two through nine may also be accessed instead of page onc This will be described later The startup file allows you to s
83. tering the above line After analyzing the line geoSHELL will search the drives for the photo manager and if it finds it it will load and run it for you Now if you had placed two spaces between run and photo manager geoSHELL would have looked for a file that begins with a space and would not have found the one you were looking for One thing is good you don t have to enclose the filename inside quotation marks like you do from Basic Another little trick that can save some typing when entering a resident command is you are allowed to use a shorter version of the command In fact geoSHELL will recognize anything from the first three characters up to the entire spelling of the command This means that you can use the command dir or you can use the Chapter 1 Getting Started command directory Also direc will perform the same function This only applies to the commands that are resident in the computer Any command that resides on the disk the transient commands must be typed in full Using Multiple Commands geoSHELL allows you to enter more than one command on a line Just make sure to put at least one space between each command You conld put more than one space between commands if you like the extra spaces are ignored It is between a command and it s parameter that you must remember to put just one space You are allowed to enter as many commands on one line as will fit geoSHELL will execut
84. that will allow you to install a drive whenever necessary much like CONFIGURE does 32 l Chapter 7 Transient Commands Using leam is very simple Just activate the drive that you would like the new command saved to and issue the learn command followed by the drive letter of the drive you wish to create a driver for Here s an example learn b Assuming that drive A is our currently active drive this example will create a disk driver for drive B and save it to drive A Now the command that is created will look something like this instal11541 64 If drive B is a 1541 and you are using a 64 this is what the new command will be named If you are using a 128 and a 1581 as drive B the new command would look like instal11581 128 Now whenever you want to get this particular drive back online such as after using the remove command you would issue this new command to get the drive up and running Whatever the device number is must not be currently used by another device on the system For instance if you wish to turn on a 1541 that is set as device 9 then you must not have a device currently set as drive B If you do just use the swap command to move drive B to another empty spot swap will let you swap positions with a non existent drive Now turn on the 1541 and issue the following command instal11541 64 b You could have these installxx xx commands saved to your boot disk an
85. the DeskTop or in this case it will look for getshell As long as getshell is on drive C or D it will be loaded Then getshell will search through all of the drives for geoSHELL and get it for you Now you are wondering why bother with putting getshell on a disk to get geoSHELL when you could just as easily put geoSHELL on each disk Well the reason is because getshell only occupies 2k on the disk and geoSHELL is over 30k You could copy getshell to every single GEOS disk and not use much space on any of them Just have geoSHELL on one disk in any of your drives The other advantage to this is that getshell has some very powerful routines contained within it that will search a path and find geoSHELL even if it is on a partition of a CMD device that is not presently visible to the system Chapter 10 has more information on this particular feature You only have to activate getshell once during your session Either double click on it s icon from the DeskTop or you can run it from geoSHELL also It will then be activated in your system The only way to turn it off would be to exit geoSHELL back to the DeskTop and then double click on the geoSHELL icon instead of the getshell icon When getshell is loaded by GEOS aftcr cxiting an application it will always look at the ramdisk first when it searches for geoSHELL Then it looks at your path partition if in Pe ae ees ea ee eS ee aa l mn Chapter 1 Getting Started one ha
86. to the Screen There is no limit to the size of file that type can handle If the file is too large to fit into the buffer area in the computer it will load in the next segment after it has displayed what is already in the buffer Just like most any other command that causes text to scroll on the screen you may use the CTRI key to pause the display and STOP to abort the display On the 128 the NO SCROLL key also functions to pause the display There are three other commands that are similar to type that you will very rarely need to use These arc atype ptype and stype In a rare case where type is unable to properly analyze the format of the text file you would use one of these commands if you know the format yourself atype is used if the file is an ASCII file ptype if it is a PETASCII file and stype if it is in screencode Perhaps only one time out of a hundred will you need to use one of these instead of type But they have been provided for just that rare instance type filename This will display the file requested to the screen 48 Pra ee ee ee ee a A Chapter 7 Transient Commands type Text Scrap Yes you can also display your text scrap with this command In fact you can display an entire text album by specifying the name of the album Type can also be used to read in any file It doesn t necessarily have to be a text file Many programs have text contained w
87. urpose of installing a fourth drive to the system Refer to the learn command for more info on having a four drive setup The onc requirement that swap has it that you must have an REU for it to work If you 4 Chapter 7 Transient Commands did not have an REU you would be limited to two drives anyway and this command would not be needed An alternative to having an REU is cither a RamLink or a RamDrive from Creative Micro Designs type This is one command that you will find yourself using all of the time This one command by itself would make a good stand alone program The command type is capable of reading and displaying text files to the screen It can display any type of file actually But it s beauty is in recognizing the difference between a GeoWrite file and a standard ASCII text file It will display your GeoWrite files to the screen so that you may read them without loading in GeoWrite But it can also display files that were created on any other type of wordprocessor Some wordprocessors store their files with true ASCII characters and some use Commodore s PETASCII character set Then there are others that save them to disk using screencode Screencode is the value that would be poked to a text screen to display a particular character The type command first loads in the file and then analyzes it As soon as it has determined the method of character storage that was used it will begin displaying the file
88. y definition along with the filename of a program that needs to run in a different screenmode This command is provided for that convenience This command requires no parameter time Here is a command that you want to make sure that you use along with the date command whenever you bootup his command will set the time in the GEOS clock By itself it will display the current setting of the clock Here is an example of how to set the clock time 0623p This would set the time to 6 23 PM geoSHELL expects to see exactly 4 digits plus either an a or a p in the parameter Notice that the 06 represents 6 o clock and the 23 represents 23 minutes after Then the p stands for PM Of course an a would stand for AM You must supply a valid time parameter or geoSHELL will just display the current timc and then try to search for a file with a name of the invalid parameter that you typed For this reason you can enter the command time followed by any 36 i a a re or A A Chapter 6 Resident Commands other command and there will be no errors wait This command is used in a startup file or an exec file to cause the computer to pausc until the user types any key on the keyboard It can be used therefore to cause a break in the action during the startup filc You might have a place during the startup or exec file where you need to change disks in one of the drives Just use
89. yboard just as you would for any other command geoSHELL will take care of the rest for you atype This command will display a text file to the screen that is stored as true ASCII characters You however will find that you very rarely need to use this command since the type command can also display a true ASCI file You would only need to use this command on those rare occasions when type fails to properly identify the file it is displaying Refer to the type command for more info on this one custom While using geoSHELL you might find yoursclf using some of the commands that change certain settings When you have these settings established that you would like to use all of the time you can use the custom command to save them to the geoSHELL file on the current drive This will only act on the current drive This gives you control in case you wish to establish different defaults for different geoSHELL files The settings that are saved are as follows videomode This is established on the 128 with either the mono command or the rgb command display type This is set with either ddate or dtype fastdirectory Set this one with either fastdir or slowdir 80 column colors Use color80 for these settings 4l Chapter 7 Transient Commands background patterns The command backpatt will set this one Each mode 64 128 40 and 128 80 can have se
90. you could crash the system and have to reboot It has been found that the DeskTop won t bother the fourth drive unless you attempt to swap drives while in the DeskTop Do all of your drive swapping with geoSHELI All 56 a Cg yy Re ee f Chapter 7 Transient Commands other operations will work however With gateWay your fourth drive will either cause a crash or it will be gone anyway when to go back to geoSHELL You might also find yourself with a necd to use remove after a disk crash of some sort Just turn the drive off and issuc the remove command This way the drive won t confuse GFOS until you can get it reinstalled Refer to the learn command on how to accomplish this or use CONFIGURE rte You can use this command to set your GEOS clock if you have a CMD device with a real time clock You may use it at any time or preferably you should place it in your boot startup file to automatically set the clock when you first boot up The command only checks the current drive for the existence of a clock So you must first select the drive containing the clock and then enter the command It was done this way since it is possible to have more than one device with a clock in it Example b rtc This example assumes that drive B contains a clock savekeys This command will only work once you have redefined one or more hotkey with the hotkey command It will save your new definitions to the geoSHELL file th
91. you out in the cold if you own one of these machines In fact geoSHELL is the ideal interface for use with any of these devices Many of the features contained within geoSHELL are centered around these devices and help you to use them more effectively Special DOS Wedge Commands If you use a CMD device especially the hard drive you will have a need for changing partitions geoSHELL incorporates a built in DOS wedge and lets you change partitions with the following command CP3 This will change to partition number 3 if it is the same type of partition as the one you are currently in If you are currently working in a 1581 partition the one you are changing to must also be of a 1581 type If it isn t geoSHELL will not let you change to it Another way to change partitions is to enter the DOS command S P to first display a list of partitions While the list is scrolling use the CTRL key to pause it and then the STOP key to halt it Now if you see the partition you want just cursor up to It and hit RETURN or double click on it and the partition will be opened for you peoSHELL makes it painless for changing partitions You could also use wildcards to display a selective directory of partitions to narrow down your selection You would use these wildcards just the same way as ts stated in your manual that came with your CMD device 62 Chapter 10 Special Features You will find that most any of the DOS wedge commands or JiffyDo
92. your input is also a terminator These terminators are also used in your startup files and exec files You will learn more about these files in other parts of this manual Chapter 2 The Directory Chapter 2 Working With The Directory The most important function of any type of user interface is working with the directory of the disks geoSHELL is no exception We are not always organized in the way that we place our files on our disks and sometimes our directories become quite long and files can easily get lost geoSHELL incorporates several ways of viewing a directory so that even a disorganized directory can be displayed in an orderly manner The dir Command The most basic directory command ts simply dir Just enter the command dir and the entire directory from the disk in the drive will be displayed in order from the first file to the last You will notice that the drive letter and disk name is displayed first followed by the filenames any border files that exist on the disk and finally the amount of free space left on the disk You know from using the DeskTop that the border files are files that you may have placed on the lower border of the screen and forgot to put back onto the pad before closing the disk geoSHELL displays these for you so that you may have access to them It is always a good idca to put them back into the main directory though The ddate and dtype Commands In addition to the filenam

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