Category: Geeks r Us
Tonight, I started playing with a little Gem of a program. It was written specifically for the blind, so is naturally screen reader accessible. It's called NoteWorthy and it's quickly becoming one of my favourites. It's a bit like a text editor, only it doesn't handle huge files and it's a tsr, so it's always running in the background, waiting to be summoned. I wasn't even aware that such programs could be made as tsrs! I won't need that when I use a multitasker, but I'm also assuming that said tool will work with a screen reader. Even if it does, though, I love the idea of popping into Noteworthy, jotting something down and then returning to whatever. This will be especially useful while learning QuickBASIC and batch programming. I haven't tried out NoteWorthy's more complex features but it does have the ability to edit and to save ascii text files. So I can easily make a note there and then read it in WordPerfect or even in Wordpad on my XP machine. The only bad thing, as I said, is that it can't accept large files. I'd love a full text editor that's both accessible and a tsr. *sigh* Anyway, this demo also came with a program called Calcworthy, which I haven't tried yet. As you've probably guessed by the name, it's a calculator. I'll write more on it when I give it a whirl but I'll say right now that I don't even have that on my Windows machine and there are many times when I want one. So if it's as easy to use as NoteWorthy, I'll probably have both running at once. More ram please! lol I wonder if GW Micro can help me find the full version of this wonderful little package. But truthfully, I doubt it. The documents say it was made by Computer Aids Corporation, which was either the old name of GW Micro or it's parent company, and, of course, it's out of business.
lol um, the ability to save and edit text files! What a novelty! Damn, I didn't know computing had come that far yet. Haha, 21st century, anyone?
Of course that's to be expected in a text editor. But it's nice to see it in a little note program too. They could just as easily have made it so that the notes were only temporary, so that when you opened a new one, the old one would disappear without being able to retrieve it later. Glad they didn't.
Large text files as a TSR? You are correct, you have much to learn. TSR software by its nature must first and foremost take up as little memory as possible and any editor loads the file into memory first. Thank God we don't have to worry about TSRs, how many files, buffers,stacks. Go look that up, and of course tell us once you find out how much trouble it is, that the new version doesn't require it anymore.
I'm very interested in tsrs so will definitely look this up. Hopefully, though, the multitasker in Enhanced DR-DOS will work with my screen reader and solve the need for them. I'll have to wait and see.
oh and btw click on start then all programs then accessories and you may be amazed at what you fine .. rumour has it there is a calculator hidden somewhere in there too. lol
That's good to know for when I'm using my XP machine, since I often need one and don't have it. But I'd still like a good calculator for DOS and it seems like Calcworthy just might be it.
To LeoGuardian: I just looked up terminate and stay resident on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_and_Stay_Resident
and wow! You were certainly right about me having alot to learn. They didn't really mention buffers or stacks, but now I have to look up interrupts, interrupt vectors, timer interrupts, system calls, Alternate Multiplex Interrupt Specification (AMIS), black art (not sure what they mean here), overlays, VCPI, DPMI, protected mode, real mode and upper memory blocks. Then, I need to look into various memory managers to see which is the best, though Enhanced DR-DOS has it's own which is supposed to be very good, so I may not even need them. I found out that there's a way to unload tsrs (very useful if I want to try a different screen reader on a new program without rebooting) with the aid of certain software, so that's a really good thing to know. Of course, Wikipedia and actual computer sites are my friend here, but I think more of this will make sense to me once I start my batch programming. I know already that several terms are simply common place so I'll need to know what they are in any case.
You know, you can do windows+R and type in notepad, wordpad or calc. ... Oh wait, no you can't. Never mind.
But running two versions of Notepad in Windows is not intuitive, remember. Dealing with TSRs and all that thing is much more intuitive than running things in separate windows, all you have to do is master 30 concepts and tons of path commands, rewrite your Autoexec and config files and spend a year on wikipedia and you are almost ready to begin using dos.
Af famously stated .. it is largely intuitive, of course you have to spend years learning it first.
In truth, I like how you can have two documents open side by side in Windows. Leopard and Snow Leopard works like Wordperfect, in that you could open more than one document in Text Edit but they are all behind each other. Normally, this would be fine, but it sucked when I was taking my Greek lessons because I was manually copying from one file to the other in order to learn. That and the other issues I had with the os is why I use it very rarely now, only for things that XP can't handle. Anyway, I generally like things nice and neat. Having 10 windows open and then having to alt-tab through them to get to the one you want is hardly something I enjoy and I'm notorious for having tons of windows open, so it happens very often to me. I like the idea of the multi-tasker in Enhanced DR-DOS, where you have a list of programs and simply pick from the list to change to the next one. As for time, I've been wanting to learn DOS for 13 years now, but every time I got started, something got in my way and I haven't had a good computer to use with it in ages. So if it takes me a year to learn basic things, I can handle it. In any case, most things that are worth learning take time to master. Maybe, in a few years, I can actually start programming within the system itself and make changes that will make it more accessible. After all, the code for the version that I'll be using is open source. In the meantime, I look forward to learning all that I can and to starting my programming. If nothing else, it will improve my memory, my patience and my conscentration and that's always a good thing.
List of running programs? You mean like the insert-f10 key in Jaws that gives you a list of all the currently running program and you arrow through it and hit enter on the one you want and it opens in its current state/window?
Dos is hardly worth learning I would say, but whatever floats your boat.
Also you just need to sit down and learn one thing, you always seem to jump from one thing to another, to another and a nother without ever sitting down to learn something.
Forget about differences between different flavors of dos and basic or whatever, take a programming language and a book, sit down and learn it, then you might get somewhere.
I'm an NVDA user so that combo won't work for me, but thanks for the info. Right now, I've pretty much got things narrowe to batch programming and QuickBASIC so that should be a good start. The only reason FreeBASIC came up was because someone said I should learn that as opposed to QB and I wanted to know why.
Lol at this board!
Some people can never make up their damn minds. Are you like ADD or ADHD or what ever the fuck you call it? And Win+R is you're friend! Just type in notepad, and bayumn! you're ready to go. Linux is always there. But waht ever. a few hents, 21st century, not 20th century.
use your task bar if you don't wanta push alt tab a billion times. Winos XP = winos key and tab. Winos 7 = winos key and t. Task bar is easy it's horizontaly you just move left right smack enter on the one you want.
I actually learned that Wordperfect 5.1 can save as .txt using the f5 option and that 6.2 (which is supposed to be dramatically different) can save not only .txt but .rtf as well! So I could do what a friend of mine does and use it to send things to people using modern computers without them even knowing the difference. But I still think that NoteWorthy is a neat thing to keep handy for times when I just want to jot down something quickly. Thanks for the task bar idea. It will make my time in Windows less exasperating.