🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <91151.122254TOMIII@MTUS5.BITNET> TOMIII@MTUS5.BITNET (Thomas Dwyer III) writes:
> 
> While we're on the topic of command lines, how does one change the command
> line *before* the ENTER key is pressed (ie - highlight text on the screen
> with the mouse and click a button to place the text at the cursor in the
> command line) ?
> 

One way which comes to mind is to be the command interpreter
and be constantly getting characters from the keyboard buffer.
In this manner, you can do anything you want to them.  This is why
4DOS can implement command-line editing, it is in control of
getting the characters one by one and then echoing them in the proper
manner depending on position in the buffer, and insert/overstrike
mode.  Short of being the command interpreter, you could intercept
the keyboard BIOS interrupt vector, but the problem there is that
you could never have enough smarts to know whether you were processing
keystrokes at the command line, or in an application.

There is another way possible to get keys from the mouse as you
suggest.  It however relies on the mouse operating "like a keyboard".
The smarts would need to reside in the mouse software to be able to
snatch the characters from the screen.  When you made the appropriate
button press to "stuff" the captured chars, then the mouse software
would put the characters, one at a time, in the keyboard buffer.  This
is how my Logitech Mouse works now (with stuffing chars, it cannot cut
from the screen, it is not smart enough).  If I have the motion output
set to generate arrow keys, then moving the mouse inserts appropriate
arrow keys in the keyboard buffer as if I had typed them from the
keyboard.  Should be no problem with cut and paste text either, as long
as the mouse driver is smart enough to know how to cut and paste.  If
there is not an existing mouse driver which does this, it would be not
an excessively hard task to write one.

> On the AT machines, there is an "Insert character in keyboard buffer" call,
> but if the buffer fills you lose the end of the command.

If you are using this and it solves your problem successfully,
then the solution to missed keystrokes is a TSR which expands the
size of the keyboard buffer.  I use a 128 char buffer and I
have never overflowed the buffer.  If you need more, make sure
to get a keybord enhancer which supports buffer size, and make
it as big as necessary.  Of course, keep in mind the DOS command
line length limitation.  If you go over that, even if it was
in the buffer, DOS will not process more than 128 chars anyway.

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	Dion Hollenbeck             (619) 455-5590 x2814
	Megatek Corporation, 9645 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA  92121
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