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Tiny Remote Control for DOS

MOREL * "*.txt" "*" Display text file from list <--------------I forget what this one does ...
This does the same as the other two ones above, but instead of always showing the same (fixed) file, it first displays a second menu of files from which you can pick the one you want to see.


SYSM dir Show the current directory <----------this shows a dir of where you place rmenu.exe, can you change dir's, i.e., "cd"?
As it is configured there it always lists the current directory. I deliberately did not include an option to change the directory into the demonstration configuration as i don't know who will be using it where and how. But ist is possible.

SYSI date ^m Get/Set host date <-----this is to be avoided! it makes the server hang, (until I manually enter the time/date ON the actual machine itself)
This might be a problem of the TELNET client. Make sure it operates in character mode (not in line mode) and make sure it sends an actual charriage return (not a line feed) when pressing the <RETURN> key.

SETL 0 TEST: €�‚ƒ„…†‡ ˆ‰Š‹Œ�Ž� �‘’“”•–— ˜™š›œ�žŸ *¡¢£¤¥¦§ ¨©ª«¬*®¯ øñýáöù <---------huh? what's this for?
This is just a demo that doesn't actually do anything (useful). It only serves to demonstrate the translation function for characters with codes above 127. DOS uses by default the codepage 437 which is fine for english and many other european languages. Older Windows versions, which usually came with a TELNET client, used a code set which was identical with characters up to code number 127 but differs in the part above. If you see these charcters garbled, you should use option "A" of the demo configuration to activate the translation mechanism (or option "9" to turn it off). If you are however on a mashine that uses unicode, you will be in bad luck as this is not (yet???) supported.

Anyway you should understand that DOS is not an ideal environment to run a TELNET server. It is not multi user (which is a minor problem) and it is not multi tasking (at least not in the proper sense). Even worse, it offers multiple ways to enter text into the system and also several ways to display text on the screen. Programs can use DOS system calls to ask for user input or BIOS calls, they could even hook into an interrupt or directly address the keyboard controler. Likewise they could use DOS calls to output text or BIOS calls or write directly into the screen buffer. And there are different kinds of programs. Some are just invoked by a command line (possibly with arguments) silently perform their task, deliver the results and terminate. Others may be designed interactively, requiring user input while running, which causes under DOS the additional difficulty that the program and RMENU cannot run at the same time, as DOS is not multi tasking.

In order to cope with all kinds of programs applying all possible combinations of the above described possibilities, software like RMENU has to perform a lot of tricks to get the job done. Unfortunately none of those tricks is ideal, each one has its pros and cons and sometimes one may even be obliged to choose the "least evel". To be as versatile as possible RMENU offers you that choice. Being aware of all this, you should carefully re-read the manual.
 
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