UTILITIES MICHAEL MEFFORD
Vol 9 No. 2
BATCHMAN

This issue's utility, BATCHMAN, is designed both to give your batch files
significantly more power and to add many of the refinements we all wish DOS
provided. You can check the DOS version, available memory, or display type
and then branch accordingly. You can create colorful menus that branch on a
user keypress. And, among its many other capabilities, BATCHMAN will let you
adjust the keyboard typematic rate and tame the grating DOS beep or turn it
into a tune.

BATCHMAN is actually a collection of 48 batch file enhancement utilities, all
rolled into one 6K program. This provides more than convenience: if
BATCHMAN's utilities were stored separately, at a minimum one cluster each,
they'd take up about 100K of disk space.

ERRORLEVELS

The key to BATCHMAN's operations is the ERRORLEVEL code, a number that programs
can report to DOS when they terminate and that can be acted upon from a batch
file. I'll abbreviate ERRORLEVEL as EL for the remainder of this
documentation.

An EL can have a value between 0 and 255. Each of the BATCHMAN commands
returns information as an EL. An explanation of the syntax of each of the
BATCHMAN commands and the ELs they return will be found below.

The syntax for BATCHMAN is:

BATCHMAN [command] [arguments] [/R]

Entering BATCHMAN without any parameters (or with an invalid parameter) will
bring up a multi-screen display that lists all the BATCHMAN commands. The
optional arguments are parameters for any given command. If you add the
optional /R switch, BATCHMAN will display the EL returned from the command.
The Report option will be most helpful when you are designing and debugging
your batch files. Be sure to place BATCHMAN in a directory included on the DOS
PATH so your batch files can find it.

THE BATCHMAN COMMANDS

I will be using the following conventions throughout the article: the commands
will be listed first, followed by any parameters they might accept, followed by
the EL the command will return. I'll put the EL in curley brackets so no one
will think it's part of the command syntax and try to type it in. For example:

CLS [nn] {EL=0}
If it is entered without the optional nn color argument, the command:

BATCHMAN CLS

will clear the screen with whatever color it finds at the current cursor
position. This provides the most flexibility when you plan to distribute a
BATCHMAN batch file to other systems because it retains the user's custom
color scheme.

If you wish to control the CLS color, just add the color argument nn, where
nn is a decimal or hexadecimal value derived from the table in Figure 1.
Hexadecimal numbers need a suffix of "h" to distinguish them from decimal.
Selecting a color in hex is easier than decimal because each of the 16 possible
values for each of the background and foreground colors fits into a single
digit: the first digit is background, the second foreground.

To clear the screen so that subsequent DOS output will use blue letters on a
light gray background, for example, you would enter:

BATCHMAN CLS 71h

The first number (7) is the background color, and the second (1) is the
foreground color. To do the same using a decimal number requires a little
math: the background color is multiplied by 16 and added to the foreground.
In the above example, the decimal equivalent would be (7 * 16) + 7 = 113,
so the equivalent command in decimal would be:

BATCHMAN CLS 113

Like its DOS counterpart, BATCHMAN's CLS also homes the cursor to the top left
corner. Unlike the DOS CLS, however, BATCHMAN's will clear the whole screen
properly in video modes such as the EGA/VGA 43/50 line modes.

CECHO [C] [nn,]string {EL=0}

CECHO is similar to the DOS ECHO command except you can choose the color of the
echoed string. The nn color value is entered in the same manner as with CLS,
and again, if you don't enter a color value, BATCHMAN will use the currently
specified color. To echo a "Zowie!" to the display in an eye-catching blinking
yellow on red, you would enter:

BATCHMAN CECHO CEh,Zowie!

The C (hex) value for the background color normally displays as orange for a
foreground color. When used as a background color, however, it displays as the
blinking low intensity counterpart, red. Keep in mind that any high intensity
color selected for the background will blink in its corresponding low intensity
color value.

The optional C parameter shown in CECHO syntax (don't confuse it with the hex
C color value in the immediately-preceding example) stands for "no carriage
returns." Normally, both CECHO and the DOS ECHO move to the next line after
echoing a string. At times this is not desirable. For example, you might
wish to echo two strings, with different colors, on the same line. With
BATCHMAN you can suppress the carriage return by adding a solitary C as the
first argument. For example, to display a red on yellow blinking "Zowie!"
followed by a normal red on yellow "Batchman!" on the same line your batch file
would consist of:

ECHO OFF
BATCHMAN CECHO C CEh,Zowie!
BATCHMAN CECHO 4Eh,Batchman!

You can suppress the carriage return to prevent the display from scrolling when
you echo to the last line of the display. This feature makes full screen menus
feasible, whereas echoing to the last line with the DOS ECHO command causes the
screen to scroll, spoiling any previous display layout.

SETLOOP [n] {EL=0}
.
.
DECLOOP {EL=SETLOOP-1}

You use the SETLOOP and DECLOOP commands when you want to repeat a set of batch
file commands. SETLOOP sets a loop counter to the n argument, which can be a
decimal number between 0 and 255. Once the counter is set, the BATCHMAN
DECLOOP command will decrement the counter each time it is executed and return
the new value of the loop counter as an EL. The short batch file:

ECHO OFF
BATCHMAN SETLOOP 10
:HERE
BATCHMAN CECHO ZONK!
BATCHMAN DECLOOP
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO HERE

will echo "ZONK!" to the display 10 times before terminating. The batch
processor will branch to the HERE label as long as EL is 1 or greater.

Programmers may wonder where the loop counter is stored while other commands
are executing. For the SETLOOP and PUSHPATH commands (PUSHPATH/POPPATH will be
discussed below) BATCHMAN creates a small TSR of approximately 500 bytes. The
loop counter uses one byte for its storage; the balance is reserved for path
strings. When the loop counter becomes zero, the BATCHMAN TSR data area is
returned to the system memory pool (unless PUSHPATH is also using the data
area). Note that since the loop counter is only one byte, you can not do loop
nesting.

If you exit a batch file before SETLOOP has decremented to zero, the TSR data
area will not be released. You should construct your batch files so that any
early exit from a loop will execute a SETLOOP 0 to force a recovery of the TSR
data area. BATCHMAN is smart enough not only to find its previous TSR data,
but will prevent the creation of another if you try to enter two SETLOOP
commands.

QFORMAT [d:] [N]
{EL=0 if successful; EL=1 if not.}


QFORMAT is designed to wipe out all the files and subdirectories on a floppy
disk at a single stroke. To keep you from accidentally trashing your hard
disk, the command will only accept A: or B: as drive arguments. All other
drive requests are ignored, and you can omit the drive argument only if A: or
B: is your current default drive.

As a further precaution, QFORMAT warns you that all data will be lost and
requires that you press Y and Enter to confirm. Any other keypress will abort
the process. If you don't want BATCHMAN to pause and ask for your approval,
however, you can add the optional N argument to the command. The N stands for
No Ask. Use this option with caution!

QFORMAT will work only on diskettes that have already been formatted by DOS.
The DOS FORMAT command puts vital information about the media type, number of
clusters per FAT, and so forth, in the boot sector of the disk. BATCHMAN's
QFORMAT command uses this information to find and place zeros in the FAT and
root directory sectors of the disk.

The reason why QFORMAT can be so fast is that it doesn't have to do the same
work as the DOS FORMAT command. FORMAT not only does a low level format, but
also writes over the entire data area of the disk. It's the low-level-and-data
-format process that takes forever. A low level format really needs be done
only once, and QFORMAT blithely skips that step. QFORMAT is sophisticated
enough to preserve bad sector information, however.

PUSHPATH
{EL=0 if successful; EL=1 if not}
.
.
POPPATH
{EL=0 if successful; EL=1 if not}

PUSHPATH saves the current drive and directory, which can then later be
restored with POPPATH. Typically, a batch file that executes an application
includes a DOS CD command (often a change of drive as well) move operations to
the place where the application resides. After the application terminates,
it's usually desirable to return to the original path.

By way of example, to run Lotus 1-2-3 on drive D: and then return to the
default path afterwards, your batch file would look something like this:

BATCHMAN PUSHPATH
D:
CD \123
123
BATCHMAN POPPATH

PUSHPATH saves the current path in a TSR data area, just as the SETLOOP
command does. While only one byte is reserved for SETLOOP's loop counter,
however, BATCHMAN's TSR data area allows stacking up several paths with
PUSHPATH. Subsequent POPPATH commands will retrieve the paths in a LIFO
(Last In First Out) stack basis.

Suppose, for instance, that you're currently in your directory and you issue
the following commands:

BATCHMAN PUSHPATH
CD \DOS
BATCHMAN PUSHPATH
CD \PCMAG
BATCHMAN POPPATH
BATCHMAN POPPATH

In this sequence, the first POPPATH puts you back into the \DOS subdirectory,
and the last POPPATH restores you to the root directory from which you started.

The number of path layers that can be stored will vary with the length of each
path pushed onto the stack. BATCHMAN's TSR area reserves 408 bytes for paths,
which allows for 6 levels of nested paths if each path is the maximum 65
characters allowed by DOS. Shorter path names will allow nesting greater than
6 levels. If necessary, you can change the storage size by modifying the
DIR_COUNT equate in the assembly listing.

BATCHMAN returns an EL of 1 if it finds the stack too full for another
PUSHPATH or if the stack is already empty with a POPPATH. Otherwise, the EL
returned is zero. When the last path is popped off the stack, the TSR data
area is discarded and returned to the DOS memory pool.

ANSI {EL=0 if ANSI found;
EL=1 if not found}

This BATCHMAN command is designed simply to determine whether ANSI.SYS is or
is not installed. If the EL is 1 you can then branch around any ANSI.SYS
escape sequences contained in your batch files. BATCHMAN is smart enough to
detect not only ANSI.SYS, but my own ANSI.COM alternative
(see our January 31, 1989, issue), but it will not find other ANSI.SYS
emulators, such as DesqView's DV-ANSI.

BEEP [m,n[;m,n]...] {EL=0}

The BATCHMAN BEEP command gives you a great deal of flexibility in controlling
the frequency and length of the sound DOS emits in response to a Ctrl-G
character. The m,n beep arguments are decimal numbers and are used in pairs,
separated by a comma. The m value represents the frequency (in Hz.), and n is
the number of 1/18th second increments that comprise the duration.

The frequencies of various musical notes can be found in the table in Figure 2.
The command for a middle C beep of a 1/2 second, for example, would be:

BATCHMAN BEEP 262,9

By separating the argument pairs with semicolons, you can produce a series of
tones with the same BEEP command. You might, for example, find it interesting
to try:

BATCHMAN BEEP 392,3;523,3;659,3;
784,3;10,3;659,3;784,12

The lowest valid frequency is 19, a very low buzzing sound. You can use a
value less than 19 to create pauses between tones: no sound will be emitted,
but the duration argument is executed, effectively producing a programmable
delay between notes.

If you omit all arguments, BEEP defaults to 1046,1--a C note for 1/18 of a
second. The DOS Ctrl-G beep is a frequency of 886 that lasts for one second.
Musically, a frequency of 886 is an out-of-tune A, which probably explains why
it grates on so many ears.

WAITTIL hh:mm[ss]
{EL=0 if successful; EL=1 if aborted}

WAITTIL provides a convenient way to pause until a certain time of day. The
hh:mm:[ss] argument is the time in hours, minutes, and optionally seconds.
BATCHMAN will wait until the specified time arrives, but you can manually
abort the wait by entering any keystroke. A typical application for WAITTIL
would be to execute an electronic bulletin board communications program that
would automatically download messages late at night when rates are lower.

WAITFOR [mm:]ss
{EL=0 if successful; EL=1 if aborted}

WAITFOR simply pauses for a specified number of minutes (mm) and seconds (ss).
You can omit the minute part of the argument if you desire. As with WAITTIL,
the WAITFOR delay can be over-ridden by pressing a key.

CURSORTYPE [m,n]

You can use CURSORTYPE either to create a cursor size that suits your taste or
to restore the normal underline cursor after an application alters it.
Entering CURSORTYPE without any arguments will default to the standard
underline cursor. To create a custom cursor, you supply the m,n arguments as
the start and stop line values. These values can be either decimal or hex;
for hex input, add an "h" suffix to the number.

The top of the character box is logical line zero; successively-numbered lines
increment downward. The valid scan line values used for m and n are 0-7 for a
CGA, 0-13 for a monochrome or EGA, and 0-15 for a VGA. The default underline
cursor start/stop lines are 6,7 for a CGA, 11,12 for a monochrome or EGA, and
13,14 for a VGA. To set an EGA solid block cursor, for example, enter:

BATCHMAN CURSORTYPE 0,13

Note that the EGA BIOS on some video boards will attempt to override your
selections. BATCHMAN temporarily turns off this BIOS EGA emulation logic for
all video boards when the cursor type is set, and this seems to work for most
systems. However, if entering CURSORTYPE without arguments does not give you
the normal default underline cursor, you can explicitly request an underline
cursor that fits your display. You may need to do this for video modes other
than the normal 25 line modes. A "wrap around" cursor, in which the stop line
has a lesser value than the start line, is supported by the hardware of only
some video systems.

BREAK {EL=0 if OFF; EL=1 if ON}

The BATCHMAN BREAK command returns the current state of DOS's Ctrl-Break
checking. You can change the state of BREAK with the DOS command of the same
name.

DRIVEEXIST d:
{EL=1 if exist; EL=0 if not}
DIREXIST directory
{EL=1 if exist; EL=0 if not}

These two BATCHMAN commands are used to return an EL of 1 to your batch files
if the specified variable exists.

ISVOL [d:]volume
{EL=1 if exist; EL=0 if not}

Similarly, this command returns an EL of 1 if a particular disk volume exists
on the named drive.

YEAR {EL=year from 1980
(0-199), where 0=1980}
MONTH {EL=(1-12)}
DAY {EL=(1-31)}
WEEKDAY {EL=(0-6), where
Sun=0; Sat=6}
HOUR {EL=(0-23)}
MINUTE {EL=(0-59)}
SECOND {EL=(0-59)}

This group of BATCHMAN commands returns the system time and date. Note that
you can obtain a relatively fine resolution of the time.

VIDEOMODE {EL=(0-19)}

The EL returned by the VIDEOMODE command allows you to determine which of the
possible screen modes listed in Figure 3 is currently being used by your
display.

ROWS {EL=display rows}
COLS {EL=display columns}

These obvious but very handy commands return the current number of rows or
columns displayed.

SETCURSOR m,n {EL=0}

By supplying values for m (the row) and n (the column) you can use SETCURSOR
to place your cursor at the specified screen location. By using SETCURSOR in
concert with CECHO you can precisely control the location of your messages.
For example, to display "Gotham City" in blue in the middle of the screen, you
would create the following batch file:

ECHO OFF
BATCHMAN SETCURSOR 12,35
BATCHMAN CECHO 1,Gotham City

Be sure to include the ECHO OFF command, both so that DOS won't spoil your
display by echoing the commands, and so that the cursor won't return to the
beginning of the next line for the CECHO command.

A related use of SETCURSOR is to hide the cursor. You can do this by setting
the cursor to display on line 26, which is off screen. Be sure to issue a
second SETCURSOR command that puts the cursor back on screen once the hidden
cursor is no longer needed, or you won't be able to see what you type! If you
forget, don't panic. Just press Esc, blindly type CLS and press Enter, and
things will return to normal with the cursor homed to the top of the display.

E43V50
{EL=0 if successful; EL=1 if not}

This BATCHMAN command loads the 8x8 BIOS font for an EGA or VGA monitor. This
changes the number of lines displayed to 43 (EGA) or 50 (VGA}. You can use the
DOS MODE command to return to the normal 25-line display.

PRTSC {EL=0}

This command will execute a printer screen dump exactly as if you had pressed
Shift-PrtSc on an 83-key keyboard or the dedicated Print Screen key on 101-key
keyboard.

COMPARE string1 string2
{EL=0 if match; EL=1 if no match}

The BATCHMAN COMPARE makes a case insensitive comparison between two strings.
For most purposes you'll probably want to use COMPARE instead of the case
sensitive DOS batch command:

IF string1==string2

With the DOS IF string comparison a non-case sensitive match requires two tests
--one for uppercase and one for lowercase. Even this does not guarantee a
match if the string is a mixture of upper and lower case, as might occur if a
batch file were looking for a person's name, for example. COMPARE solves this
case problem. Note that the BATCHMAN COMPARE does not need the double equal
signs the DOS IF command uses.

CANCOPY filespec [d:]
{EL=0 if room to copy; EL=1 if not}

Before you copy a file or a number of files to another drive (especially a
floppy disk drive), you can use CANCOPY to see if there is enough room for all
the specified files. The filespec you supply can use the DOS ? and *
wildcards. If you don't specify the target drive, the default drive is
checked. Thus, for example, to check whether the collection of PC Magazine
utilities you keep in a directory called PCMAG on drive C: will fit onto a
floppy, you would enter:

BATCHMAN CANCOPY C:\PCMAG\*.* A:

BATCHMAN returns an EL of 0 if there is room; otherwise a 1 would be returned.
If you enter this from the DOS command line, you'll want to include the /R
option to see the EL returned on screen.

WARMBOOT
COLDBOOT

As their names imply, WARMBOOT and COLDBOOT reboot your system. WARMBOOT does
the same thing as pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del; COLDBOOT is like hitting the big red
switch. A COLDBOOT does a memory check (among other things) that WARMBOOT
does not, and it takes a lot more time. Of course, be forewarned that with
either of these commands all unsaved data in RAM memory will be lost.
Note that WARMBOOT and COLDBOOT may not work on some non-compatible systems.

SHIFT ALT | CTRL
{EL=1 if depressed; EL=0 if not}

This command returns the state of either the Alt or Ctrl key. For example,

BATCHMAN CTRL

returns an EL of 1 if the Ctrl key is currently depressed. You can use the
SHIFT command along with the BATCHMAN GETKEY command without arguments to
detect alternate key presses. (See GETKEY, below, for an example.)

NUMLOCK [ON | OFF] {EL=0}
CAPSLOCK [ON | OFF] {EL=0}
SCROLLOCK [ON | OFF] {EL=0}

These three self-explanatory commands toggle the current shift state of the
NumLock, CapsLock or ScrollLock keys when used without the ON or OFF options.
They explicitly turn the three keys on or off if the optional arguments are
supplied.

Thus, for example:

BATCHMAN NUMLOCK

will toggle the NumLock state on if it was off or off if it was on. Entering

BATCHMAN NUMLOCK OFF

will turn the NumLock state off regardless of whether it is currently on or
off. This latter would be a useful line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT if you use the
numeric keypad for cursor navigation instead of number entry. Note that on
some keyboards the LED indicator lights may not faithfully track changes in
shift status.

RENDIR old new {EL=0 if successful; EL=1 if not}

Long-time users of our utilities will recognize this command, as it performs
the same function as the standalone RENDIR utility published in our April 15,
1986 issue. The version presented here will rename a directory, but only on
systems using DOS 3.0 or later. To use it simply enter the path of the old
directory and the new name.

For example, to change the name of a temporary directory named TMP on the C:
drive to a permanent name, say, ROBIN, you would enter:

BATCHMAN RENDIR C:\TMP C:\ROBIN

Be sure to include the complete path for both the old and new directory names
if the directory is other than the default.

ROMDATE {EL=0}

ROMDATE displays the eight bytes of the BIOS date at address FFFF:0005 of the
ROM BIOS. Usually, the display will be something like 10/07/87, but some
clone BIOSs do not have a date. If no ASCII numbers are found, BATCHMAN
displays nothing.

GETKEY ['string' n] {EL=scan code if no ['string' n] list; else
EL=position in list.}

There are probably hundreds of versions of the batch file GETKEY program.
They return the scan code of the next key you press as an EL. If you enter the
BATCHMAN GETKEY command without the optional (bracketed) arguments, it will do
the same thing.

Entered without arguments, GETKEY can also be used with the BATCHMAN SHIFT
command to detect Alt- or Ctrl- key combinations. The scan code for the "Q"
key is 16. To check for an Alt-Q keypress (perhaps as a Quit key command),
you would use the following batch file:

ECHO OFF
:GETKEY
BATCHMAN GETKEY
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 16 GOTO GETKEY
BATCHMAN SHIFT ALT
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO GETKEY
ECHO Alt-Q was pressed.

GETKEY's optional key list provides still another kind of functionality with
its optional key list. The information you need may not be the scan code of a
given key, but rather its position in a string. If you supply the optional
'string' argument to GETKEY, BATCHMAN will wait either until one of those keys
listed has been pressed or until you break out of the command with Ctrl-Break
or Ctrl-C. An example may helpful here. With the command:

BATCHMAN GETKEY 'yn'

BATCHMAN will wait until either the "Y" or the "N" key or one of the break keys
mentioned above is detected. All other keypresses are ignored, and if the
break- out keys are pressed, the EL returned will be 255. GETKEY is not case
sensitive, so if either "Y" or "y" is pressed, the EL will be 1, since the "y"
is the first character in the string of valid keypresses. For "N", an EL of 2
will return.

The string must be enclosed in a pair either of single or double quotes. If
you want the single quote included as a valid keypress, enclose it in double
quotes and vice versa for double quotes, as in the following example:

BATCHMAN GETKEY '"'

You can also include the function keys (even the F11 and F12 keys of the
extended keyboard) in the GETKEY list. The function key numbers are listed
without quotes, (they are designated by the n in the command syntax above), and
may or may not be further identified with a leading "F." Multiple function
keys are delimited by either a space, comma or semicolon. To add the F1 and F2
as valid keys to the "yn" string example above, you would enter either:

BATCHMAN GETKEY "yn" F1 F2

or just

BATCHMAN GETKEY "yn" 1 2

If F1 is now pressed, the returned EL will be 3, since F1 is the third entry
in the list.

DOSVER {EL=(major*32)+minor}

DOSVER returns an EL representation of the DOS version in use. DOS version
numbers have two parts, the Major version (the number to the left of the
decimal point) and the Minor version (the number to the right). For DOS
version 3.10, then, 3 is the major and the 10 is the minor. Since the largest
EL number is 255, the DOS version number does not fit conveniently into an EL.
For DOS 3.10, for example, if the dot is discarded the remaining 310 is too
large for an EL.

Of course, BATCHMAN could be content to return only the major number,
truncating anything after the dot, or even the first digit after the dot. But
that would be less than sufficient for some applications. So instead, the
DOSVER command compresses the version number by multiplying the major number by
32 and adding it to the minor number. With DOS 3.30 the result will be (3*32)+
30=126; with DOS 4.00 it would be 128. If there had been a DOS version 3.32
we would have a problem of course, since this would also return 128.
Historically speaking however, we are safe here.

MAINMEM n | R {EL=0 if enough}
EXPMEM n | R {EL=0 if enough} EXTMEM n | R {EL=0 if enough}

The arguments for these three memory commands can be either a decimal number,
n, or an R. The decimal argument is used to check whether the desired amount
of memory (in KB) is free. If BATCHMAN finds that there is enough free memory
to meet the request, the EL will be 0. Thus, if an application needs 512K
bytes of the 640K maximum possible with DOS, you would enter:

BATCHMAN MAINMEM 512

The EL will return 0 if there are at least 512K bytes free; otherwise, a 1.
Your batch file can then branch to an error message if there is not enough
memory to run the application. Note that these memory commands do not
allocate the memory. They only check if it is free.

The alternative R argument stands for Report and will display the current free
memory of the type requested on the screen. To see how much free expanded
memory you have, for example, enter:

BATCHMAN EXPMEM R

The report option of the three types of memory will go nicely with BATCHMAN's
ROMDATE command in a system information batch file.

DISPLAY {EL=display type}

The DISPLAY command will report on the type of display your system has
installed. The values returned by DISPLAY as EL codes are:

1=MDA
2=CGA
4=EGA color
5=EGA mono
6=PGS
7=VGA mono
8=VGA color
11=MCGA mono
12=MCGA color

CPU20 {EL=CPU type}

Similarly, the CPU command returns an EL that indicates the microprocessor
used by your machine. The specific EL numbers are: 1=8086/8088; 2=80186;
3=80286; and 4=80386.

WINDOW m,n,w,h[,c,b] {EL=0 if
successful; EL=1 if not}

The powerful WINDOW command displays screen boxes. It provides several
parameters and options. The first two decimal numbers (m,n) are the row and
column of the top left hand corner of the window. The next two decimal
numbers (w,h) are the desired width and height of the window (including the
border characters.)

The smallest size that WINDOW allows is 2 characters in width and height.
The optional fifth parameter, c, can be either a hexadecimal or decimal number
for the color of the window. If no color argument is supplied, the current
color of the screen is used by default. The last parameter, b, sets the type
of border used to surround the window. If no parameter is found, spaces are
used. If you enter a minus sign for b, a single-line box character will be
drawn. An equals sign for b will produce a the double-line box character.
In all cases, the center of the window is cleared with spaces of the chosen
color. For example, the command

BATCHMAN WINDOW 1,1,80,25,17h,=

will create a blue window with white double line box characters that will fill
the entire screen, making a nice menu frame. Text could then be added with
the BATCHMAN SETCURSOR and CECHO commands.

TYPEMATIC [m,n | N] {EL=0 if
valid parameters; EL=1 if not}

m=typematic rate (0 - 31);
larger m=faster rate

n=initial delay (0 - 3);
larger n=longer delay

N=normal: m=20; n=1

default: m=25; n=0

TYPEMATIC works only with keyboards that support adjustable typematic
(automatic key repeating) rates at the BIOS level. That includes most
machines, starting with the AT, but not for all clones.

The first optional decimal parameter, m, is a number between 0 and 31 and
represents the desired typematic rate. The larger the m value, the faster
your keyboard will repeat keystrokes. The second parameter, n, has a range of
0-3, and sets the initial delay. This delay is the length of time you must
hold down a key before it begins repeating. The larger the delay value the
longer the delay. The delay parameters are in increments of 1/4 second, with
0=1/4 and 3=1 second. The typematic parameters are divisors and cannot be
easily be translated into fractions of a second, however, and so should be
thought of only as a gradient scale.

If you don't enter any parameters, TYPEMATIC defaults to what I consider ideal,
a repeat rate of 25 and a delay of 0. The 25 translates into about 17
characters per second with an initial delay of 1/4 second. You can restore
the typematic 2rate to the normal hardware defaults (11 characters per second
with a 1/2 second delay) by using the N parameter. Just enter:

BATCHMAN TYPEMATIC N

and the normal values of 20, 1 will be used. Once you try adding a little
zoom to your keyboard, however, I don't think you'll ever go back to the
hardware defaults.