
                        PD Maintenance Dos Shell
                         Written by Brian Veditz
                      donated to the public domain
  
   The Maintenance program is basically a WCCode version of a dos shell.
It has many limitations, not the least of which is that you cannot
actually run a dos program.  Of course, since you are using windows,
running a dos program is of little use.  The main use is to edit text
files from remote, view display files, run WC-Code programs and download
and upload files from any directory.  This is not only handy when you
are calling from remote, but has many useful local uses.  For instance,
viewing a .BBS file cannot be done in standard dos, you have to load up
your editor and view it there.  With the maintenance program all you
need to do is switch to the directory of your display file and 'Type'
it.  The second local use is for running WCCode programs locally.  Yes,
you can do this with WCRun, but its a tad easier to do from the
maintenance software.  Perfect for those times when you need to run
the configuration program for some door.

   The limitations?  One, you'll notice the pif file with the archive.  The
problem I had on my system is that dos windows do not close out.  You can
alter this somewhere in windows, but if for some reason you don't want to
make that a permanent change, I made a little pif file which it uses to
execute dos shells (for the dir, unzip and zip commands)...  Without this,
your system will seem to freeze up, since the real 'shell' may not return
back to the maintenance program.

   The next limitation is editing text files...  you can't edit anything
that has longer then 70 or so characters.  That is, anything that the
editor will wordwrap around if you try to edit it.  I would't bother.
If you have doorway, I would recommend using something like that to run
the edit command on the file the user specified.  I do not have any
details on how to do this however :)  Perhaps someone will make a good
wccode editor for editing things other then messages. Until then, this
is the best we've got.  The only real use for this is to edit 'skinny'
bulletins or to edit some batch files.  Don't bother trying to edit your
graphical menus, it will destroy them. :)

   The Zip, Unzip and Directory commands all run shells, as mentioned
above...  That makes it a limitation since any dos shell can cause havoc
with your system and windows.  The directory routine can be replaced with
a good findfile routine (findfirst, etc)...  the zip and unzip routines
I'm not really sure how you could replace.

   The reason I called it maintenance and not dos shell is because it
shows up in the 'location' on the who's online list...  Maintenance
seemed a better location name then 'dos' :)  The code should explain
basically everything you can do.  I will include a compiled version
of this, since it doesn't 'require' any directory changes (it will
always default to D:\ however, whether you have that directory or
not) for those people who download this library but do not have
WCCode.  

   If you have any questions, you may leave me mail on MSI.  I do not plan
on releasing 'updates' to this code, so any feature advancements will have
to be done by you or your programmer.  As with all the code in this library,
you are free to use it or alter it at your own descretion, I however to
not take any responsibility for whatever the software may or may not do
to your system.  If you make any bug fixes, code cleaning or feature
additions, I would appreciate seeing them.
