D&Do v. 1.0   Prev   Next   Top


Exploring our Metascript

Using our DirCreate.ms metascript file, let us explore other behavioral parameters that have a less visible impact.

One that we may want to change is the DCLR (Drop Clear) parameter value. It is set at 1 (for true or yes) in the template. If you set it to 0, the drop list will not be cleared when the D&Do has completed its activity. It behaves about the same except that, after a click on the target area, it displays "DONE" instead of "BY1 ID= Dest Dir". The drop list is not cleared as we can verify on the status line tool-tip. We need to explicitly clear the lists (using "Clear Lists"). We see, also, the advantage and disadvantage of clearing automatically the list. It makes the use of D&Do more efficient but we are losing the possibility of consulting the drop list after the completion of its activity.

Two other behavioral parameters are OUTC and SOUT. Both are set to 1 in the template. If you set both to 0, the script may be faster and, more importantly, the system clipboard will not change. With these new settings, the default variant of the argument list is no more working, since, that variant expects to output to the clipboard. The "Create" variant will work very well without perturbing the system clipboard contents. There are situations where we need the clipboard for other applications. Usually, both of these parameters are set to the same value.

We have now a very good idea on how to configure the metascript to take advantage of a command line script in adapting it into a window-based desktop environment. The next section provided a detailed description of each possible metascript parameter.

 


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Copyright (c) 2003 Marcel St-Amant