Zoom Shell captures the output of DOS commands by running them in a DOS window (called the console). Only console applications (like DIR or COPY or ZIP) give output to Zoom Shell. Zoom Shell waits for output until you tell it to stop, but if you press <esc>, Zoom Shell will stop waiting. The command will continue to run in the background, but you will not see its output. In Windows 95, you will not see any error messages generated by commands; in Windows NT, you will.
DOS Applications:
DOS (or console) applications which involve user interaction, like WordPerfect 5.1 or ftp, should not be run in a minimized window.
When nothing seems to happen:
If you try to execute a DOS Application and nothing seems to happen, look and see if it is running in a minimized window. It may be asking you for input. PKZIP/PKUNZIP (or the freeware ZIP/UNZIP) are applications which you may wish to capture, so that you can see the results of them in your output window. However, be careful about running them in such a way that they will try to ask you a question (prompt for overwrite of a file, for example). In that case, they will appear to hang while waiting for some response from you.
Zoom Shell checks appoximately every ten seconds for output, and if a program appears to not be doing anything, it will try to find the console window and display it for you.
Xcopy will get stuck if you try to create a directory:
xcopy /s "c:\program files\zshell" c:\test
Xcopy will ask you if "test" should be a file or directory. In order for the copy to proceed, you must press "f" or "d" in the console window.
This is not a port of the Unix shell. This command (an alias for zcapture) allows you to capture a command which is not in your capture list, without the bother of adding it to the capture list. What it means to Zoom Shell is, "run this command in the console (DOS) shell." In the case of the sh command, Zoom Shell will not check every 10 seconds to see if the window is stuck. It will wait silently forever. Incidentally, this command will also cause Windows NT to wait until a Windows command is complete. Windows 95 will not wait.