CompuServe Messages

Actually what I had in mind was just a couple of sophisticated batch files. DOS alone couldn't do it but if you run 4DOS, you can construct for…next loops and conditional branching which would allow that sort of things. That's one of the big differences between dos and unix. The ability to solve simple problems with simple (and not so simple) shell scripts. Now that dos is leaving and Windows4 is coming in to play, this is probably going to be gone for ever. The draw back of making computers totally idiot proof is that you loose the computer's greatest ability -> to compute! They are turning computers into specialized typewriters as the great majority of people use computers to do nothing else other than that. The draw back is that if you need anything that isn't readily available from commercial software (the majority of these day to day stuff) you're out of luck. Oh well, I bet the last thing you're asking for was this grumpy mambo jumbo. <g> Let me think about this. I haven't had much free time lately (sleeping 4 hours a night seven days a week for 3 months) and I'm ready to start drilling holes in people's teeth using my Makita. The advantage of batch files is that you can tweak them as much as you want. To write a full blown application a lot of thought has to go before actually implementing it.