PWB 1.00 menukey Switch Resets to ALT When Shelling Out to DOS

ID Number: Q63267

1.00

MS-DOS

buglist1.00 fixlist1.10

Summary:

If the "menukey" switch in the DOS version of the Programmer's

Workbench (PWB) version 1.00 is set to anything other than ALT (which

is the default), it will be redefined to the ALT key after shelling

out to DOS. Thus, the menukey switch will lose its assignment any time

you choose Compile, Run Program, Debug Program, or DOS Shell.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in PWB version 1.00. This

problem was corrected in PWB version 1.10.

More Information:

The menukey switch determines which keystroke activates the PWB main

menu bar. The ALT key is normally used for this, but menukey can be

redefined to any keystroke. For example, menukey is automatically

defined to F9 if you choose Brief Editor emulation when installing the

Programmer's WorkBench.

Whenever you invoke any function (such as Build) that goes out to DOS

for execution and then returns, the menukey switch is reset to ALT, so

that both ALT AND the user-defined keystroke invoke the menu.

To work around this problem, you can use the Restart command to invoke

a macro that redefines the menukey to the desired value each time you

return from a DOS SHELL command, which will then keep ALT from

activating the menu. For example, to cause F9 to always be reset as

the only menukey, put the following line in the PWB tagged section of

the TOOLS.INI file:

restart:= arg "menukey:F9" assign

Since the Restart command, if it exists in TOOLS.INI, is invoked

automatically when returning from a SHELL command, this method

guarantees that the key assignment will always remain consistent.