Copyright: WinXs Shell ® 1997 Mick Meaden


Contents

Name

Winxssh - WinXs Shell

Description

The WinXs shell is a shell extension program primarily intended for use with Explorer.  To activate the WinXs shell, select a folder using the alternate mouse button, then select the WinXs item on the resulting pop-up menu. .

When using Explorer, folders can be selected in either the left (tree view) window or the right (list view) window.  In both cases, a folder is selected by using the alternate mouse button; the resulting pop-up menu contains the WinXs menu item.  Note that when the WinXs shell is started from the left window of Explorer, the selected directory becomes the current directory; when it is started from the right window, the current directory is the parent of the selected directory.

The WinXs shell can also be activated directly from any folder on the desktop, or from the Start button on the Taskbar.  Again, select the folder using the alternate mouse button, and then select WinXs on the pop-up menu.

The output window of the shell contains a directory listing, similar though not quite identical to the output produced by the "ls" command on UNIX.  Files and directories are selected by using the left-mouse button; commands are activated by selecting the appropriate item on the drop-down menus.  Any file selections in the output window are passed as input files to the selected command.

To integrate the WinXs shell with Explorer, check the "Folder context menus" box in the WinXs setup dialog.  This causes setup to make the necessary changes to the Windows Registry, which it does by defining the WinXs shell as a static menu item for folder context menus.  The uninstall option, also provided on the setup dialog, will  delete these changes to the Registry if you decide to remove WinXs from your system.

See Also

Changing Directories

Copying, Deleting and Renaming

Menus and Commands

Output Window

Run Command Dialog

User Defined Commands

Viewing and Running Files


Changing Directory

The current directory can be changed in the following ways:

•	By double-clicking a directory entry in the output window.

•	By selecting a directory entry in the output window using the arrow keys and then pressing Enter.

•	By selecting "Change directory" on the File menu.

In the first two cases, the selected directory becomes the current directory and the output window is redrawn.  In the third case, the Shell displays the Change Directory dialog, which contains two fields:

1 	A combo-box containing a one-line edit control and a drop-down history list.  You can either type a directory name directly in the edit control, or drop-down the history list and select a directory by clicking it or by using the arrows keys to select it and then pressing Enter.  The history list holds a record of the last 20 directory names selected via the Change Directory dialog, which are saved between invocations of the Shell.

2 	A listbox containing a list of directory entries in the current directory.  Note that on Windows 95 these are displayed as short names; on Windows NT 4.0 they are displayed as long names.  To select a drive or directory from the listbox, double-click the required entry.

To close the Change Directory dialog and switch to the selected directory, click the OK button or press Enter.  To abandon the dialog without changing directories, click Cancel or press ESC.  In either event, the main Shell output window will be redrawn automatically.

The name of the current directory is always displayed on the Title bar of the output window.


File Management
Copying, Deleting and Renaming

Copying Files

The Copy File command on the File menu allows a single file to be copied, multiple files to be copied, or the entire contents of a directory to be copied.  The "From:" field in the copy dialog can contain one or more file names (possibly containing DOS wild-card characters) or a directory name.  The "To:" field identifies the output file or directory.  If more than one file name or a directory name is specified in "From:", then "To:" should contain a directory name.

Deleting Files

The Delete File command on the File menu allows one or more files to be deleted from the current directory.  The "Filename(s):" field in the delete dialog can contain one or more filenames, possibly containing DOS wild-card characters.

Renaming Files or Directories

The Rename File command on the File menu allows a file or directory to be renamed, or a file to be moved to another drive/directory.  The "From:" field in the rename dialog can contain a single file name or directory name.  The "To:" field gives the new name for the file or directory.  Note that a directory can be renamed but it cannot be moved.


Commands
Menus and Commands

The WinXs commands are available from the drop-down menus on the Shell's menu bar, as follows:

File Menu

This menu contains general commands.  The first two groups are commands internal to the operation of the shell itself, and include directory management commands and file management commands.  These are self explanatory, although note that only empty directories can be removed.  The next group contains the "Details" command, which displays information about the current drive; the "Refresh" command, which is used to refresh the output window manually (note that the output window is refreshed automatically whenever a change of content or file size is detected); and the "Run" command, which is used to invoke execution of another program (see below).  The next group of commands, "Editor" and "Shell", provide access to an external text editor and command interpreter respectively, as defined from the WinXs setup program.  "Configure" causes the WinXs setup program to be activated, and "Exit" causes the shell to terminate.

Run commands

Edit Menu

The "Copy all" item on this menu causes the entire contents of the display window to be copied to the Windows clipboard.

View Menu

This menu provides four groups of commands that permit the contents of a directory to be displayed in various different ways.  The first group of commands control which directory items are displayed; that is, the entire contents of a directory, subdirectories only, or files only.  The second group controls the order in which items selected by the first group are displayed; that is, in name order, size order (largest first), in modification time order (most recent first), or in extension order.  The third group toggles between long and short directory listings, between coloring/not coloring file objects in the output display, and between displaying file object names in all lower-case or as they are actually recorded on disk; that is, in a mixture of upper-case and lower-case (see note below.).  The final group allows the display to be limited to files matching a pattern, which can be expressed using normal characters and wild-card characters (default "*.*" for all files).

This menu can also be accessed by clicking the alternate mouse button anywhere in the output window.

NOTE. Win32 file-systems are case insensitive, so the names file.ext and FILE.EXT refer to the same file; that is, file names cannot be distinguished by character case alone.

Utilities Menu

This menu provides access to the general utilities; that is, cksum, cal, cmp, comm,  csplit, diff, du, file, grep, hd, more, pax, pr, sed, split, strings, tail, touch, uniq and wc.

Filters Menu

Provides access to the filter programs; that is, cat, col, cut, dd, expand, fold, fmt, grex, nl, paste, sort and tr.

eXchange Menu

Provides access to programs in the UNIX eXchange package; that is, dos2unix, unix2dos, uuencode, uudecode, compress, uncompress, gzip and gunzip.

AddOns

This is a dynamic menu that you can used to add your own commands.  Any executable file can be added (.com, .exe or .bat).  Optionally, the command can be passed arguments and current file selections in the Shell's output window.

User defined commands

Manual

Provides access to WinXs online command manual pages.

Help Menu

And finally, this menu provides access to the Shell help file and the About box, which gives version number details of the shell and user registration information.  The Color Settings item allows you to modify color settings for the output display.   The Register item provides access to the register.exe program, which can be used  for email, fax or postal registration of the product.


Run Commands
Run Command Dialog

The Run Command dialog is brought up by selecting "Run Command" on the File Menu, or by selecting a file and then pressing Enter, or by double clicking a file item in the output window (when the selected file has no association in the Windows Registry).

Command:

This field identifies the program file associated with the selected document (if any), which is determined by examining the Windows Registry.  If no such association exists, the document will be displayed in the filename field (see below) and the default operation will be changed to display the document via More (use the Browse button to select a different viewer).

Filename:

The name of the selected document.  This field may be blank if the document file is a program file (i.e., a .EXE or .COM file).

Options:

These radio buttons determine whether the selected document will be executed (i.e., passed as input to the associated application), viewed via More, or viewed via Hd.  If the selected document is associated with an application, the default will be to execute the document; otherwise the default will be to view the document via More.


User Defined Commands

This version of WinXs provides a mechanism by which you can add your own commands to the Shell's AddOns menu.  With the registered version of the product, you can use the AddOns | Organize tool to manage this menu.  In the unregistered version, you must edit the file "addons.ini", which is located in your WinXs installation folder.  The file can be edited with any program capable of editing ASCII text (for example, notepad.exe).

The addons.ini file contains two sections, as follows

[Menu]
User1=MS &Ftp
User2=MS &Telnet
User3=&MyProg
...
User20=

[Tools]
Item1=ftp.exe,N
Item2=telnet.exe,N
Item3=+myprog.exe,-L -N
...
Item20

Entries in the "Menu" section contain the text of the menu items to be inserted on the AddOns menu.  There can be up to twenty of these.  The ampersand (&) character indicates the hot key setting for an entry.  Hot keys are optional but, if present, should be unique within the menu.

Entries in the "Tools" section contain details of the command to be executed when the associated menu item is selected (Item1 gives the setting for User1, Item2 for User2, etc.).  The syntax of entries in this section is:

ItemN=[+]programname[,Args][,N]

where square brackets [] indicate an optional field.

[+].  Indicates that the full pathname of the executable file should be constructed by concatenating the folder name of the WinXs installation folder, a backslash character, and "programname".  Otherwise, "programname" is used as specified (without modification).

programname.  Gives the name of the executable file, which can be a full pathname (e.g., c:\mybin\myprog.exe) or, if the file is in a folder on the current search PATH, a file name (e.g., command.com).  The files extension should be included in this field, and can be any of .com, .exe or .bat.

[,Args].  Command arguments (if any).

[,N].  If present, any current file selections in the Shell's output window will be ignored when invoking "programname".  Otherwise, the Shell passes file selections, separated by spaces, on the command line.  Filenames are passed in their short name form to 16-bit programs, and in their long name form to 32-bit programs.  Any long file names containing space characters are quoted.

NOTE.  Changes to addons.ini do not take effect until the next time the Shell is started.


Output Window

Format

The output window contains a directory display in either long or short format.  A short format display is simply a list of file and directory names, where executable files are identified by a trailing asterisk, and directory names are identified by a trailing slash.  A long format display appears as follows:

Total 4
drw---             0    05-02-1996 09:29    .
drw---             0    05-02-1996 09:29    ..
-rwa--          1024    05-02-1996 09:31    A small file
-rwa--       1048576    05-02-1996 09:32    A larger file

The first line indicates the number of entries in the current directory.  Subsequent lines provide detailed information about each directory entry, as follows:

<Mode> <Size>   <Modified>      <Name>

•	<Mode>  Shows the document status and permission bits in the form "drwahs", where "d" indicates that the document is a directory, "r" indicates that the caller has read permission to the document (always set on Windows 95), "w" indicates that the caller has write permission to the document, "a" indicates that the archive bit is set for the document, "h" indicates that the document is hidden, and "s" indicates that the document is a system file.  A dash "-" in any of these fields indicates that the associated bit is not set

•	<Size>  Shows the size of the document in bytes.

•	<Modified>  Shows the date and time of the last file modification, in the form "dd-mm-yyyy  hh:mm".  Note that all WinXs date displays are year 2000 ready.

•	<Name>  Shows the long, Windows 95/NT name of the file

Color Coding

Optionally, lines in a directory display can be color coded.  By default, display lines are colored as follows:

•	Objects that have the "hidden" or "system" bit set (Red).

•	Folder objects (Blue).

•	Read-only files (Magenta).

•	Executable files (.exe, .com, .bat and .pif) (Green).

•	Compressed files (.zip, .gz, .Z and .sit) (Orange).

•	All other files (Black).

Any or all of these settings can be changed by selecting "Color settings" on the Help menu.  Selecting an item on the resulting drop-down menu causes the standard Windows color dialog to be displayed.  Select the color you want and then click OK.  The selected color is applied immediately.

Filenames

The type of file name passed to a WinXs command will be the one most appropriate to the operation of that command.  In the case of 32-bit programs, long file names will be passed.  Short file names will be passed to 16-bit programs.  All WinXs programs are 32-bit, but external programs such as the Text Editor defined via the setup program may be 16-bit.


Viewing Files
Viewing and Running Files

The contents of a file can be viewed or executed using any of the following methods:

•	By double-clicking a file entry in the output window.

•	By selecting a file entry in the output window and then selecting "Run command" on the File menu.  This causes the Run Command dialog to be displayed.

•	By selecting a file entry in the output window and the selecting "Hd" or "More" on the Utilities menu.

The file name passed to the program will depend on whether it is a 16-bit or a 32-bit program (i.e., short names will be passed to 16-bit programs, long names to 32-bit programs).

Run Command Dialog