hilite.txt

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Name: hilite.com
aim: colourize MSDOS's DIR output
released: 28th July 1997
by: Graspy Lemur of Happi Llama Realtech

[Note to German hilite users! As I write this all the Sailor Kriegerin (?) 
are dead apart from Sailor Moon. Aieieiei. hah ahahahahah. RTL2 rules, it 
rules! They never died in America you know, how sad! ahahahahahha ha ha ha!]

Hello, I am called Graspy Lemur, and I am insane.

This program was created with the intention of providing colour output to 
that old MSDOS DIR command.

Now, you may well say, there are 50 billion (estimated) colour directory 
things out there, it's one of the first things people do when they learn a 
new language. (As well as pop-up calculators). There's the new version of 
"ls" for the PC by Gnu, which has a colour output option, there's Wersting 
Dir, (on the home page of which I am famously quoted as saying is "damn 
fine"), and too many other ones to list.

The main problem with these utilities is that they are usually not memory 
resident, and they usually slow down further by sorting things with very non-
computer science algorithms, or even using ANSI.SYS (stop me laughing 
please, I can't help it).  Even at 200Mhz+, ls causes an annoying delay.
Also they are non of them fully compatible with the DOS command. Even Wersting 
DIR, my old favourite has problems with wildcards if you're not in the 
directory you're listing, doesn't pause the screen with /p option when you 
use the /w option etc etc. Ok, so it does have nice /zip options etc to 
interrogate files, but these don't work if you have /w, so you have to 
redefine your dircmd env. variable etc etc, and so it goes on. Plus it 
doesn't run on my Pentium II, which is a bit annoying.

Hilite.com works in a new and (to my knowledge) unique way. Rather like an 
electronic hilighting pen (hence the name!), it sits in the background while 
you work, and watches over the output of the dos teletype function (which 
dir uses), highlighting in various unseemly colours words which have certain 
endings, eg .COM.

It's a TSR: you run hilite.com once to set it going, then run it again if 
you want to turn it off. All your precious 784 bytes of memory will be 
returned to you, unless some other program has hooked interrupt 11 and 
chained to you. (or interrupt 2F, used as the installation check). In this 
case, just do the old trick of deactivating TSRs in the reverse order you 
activated them.

Limitations: OK, so you can't get colour if you do an ordinary DIR without 
the /w option, nor if you use the /v or /b options. This is because I can't 
figure out how DOS prints the list in these modes. It probably nastily calls 
its print routines directly, which rather defeats the object of having an 
interrupt table in the first place.
    So basically what I'm saying is that this is a /w only option. Don't 
forget BTW, (or learn as a new fact!) that you can have the 

set dircmd=/w /p /l /oe etc etc many other options (not)

line in your autoexec.bat, so you don't have to keep typing it out. The 
useful and relatively rare options used above are:

/w wide format listing
/p pause if screen full
/l lower case for unix freaks
/o(e) sort by..in this case, file extension

SEE DIR /? in dos 7, or help dir in 6.22- for the other couple of options

I have always been annoyed that the useless /b option overides the /w 
option, but the /v option doesn't, so if you have your dircmd set to /w for 
normal use, but want a /verbose listing you have to set dircmd=, then dir 
/v/p, then set dircmd back again.

You can probably set up a batch file or an alias or something with lots of 
percent symbols in it so you could dir things or dirv things. Considering it 
irritates me that much, I'm amazed I haven't endeavoured to find out yet...

Amusingly, not only will your dir /w listings now be coloured, but various 
other dos progs which use int 10 fn 0xe to output text will now be auto 
coloured- eg the memory hacker PV by McAfeeeeeeeeeee which prints a goodbye 
message telling you to read the LICENCE.TXT. Heh. Also, I have just 
discoverd, pkzip will now be coloured, which is damn sexy, and things you 
type on the command line! Bliss! Joy! Ich Bin Sailor Moon!

BTW, for ultimate DOS comfort you want to get WCED by Wormsoft, which is a 
command line editor with an up arrow history, like DOSKEY, except it allows 
macros to be defined, has unix style command completion with the TAB key and 
prints a directory listing in wide format if you press tab at the start of a 
line. It is no coincidence that they use the dos teletype function, so it 
gets coloured for you by hilite.com. Neat huh?

For anyone considering altering the program, don't bother- it's perfect. 
Nyahahahaha. No, but seriously, it's written in asm for the NASM assembler; 
please see the notes in the source code for hints on compiling it with 
TASM,MASM,WASM,PASM,BASM,ZASM whateverASM if you haven't used the completely 
perfect assembler NASM, which has all mmx functions and pentium pro 
instructions. You can probably change the extensions/colours without really 
knowing asm if you are careful enough and have nasm/can download it. What 
would we do without the net, eh? eh? We'd all starve, oh yes.


This is only the third freeware [but see note at end if non-home user] 
release by happi llama realtech. The other two- My Balls Have Dropped 
(puzzle bobble clone better than the official conversion by far) and LVBE2, 
a very servicable, if basic VBE2 graphics library which has far too much 
evil c code in it are available from:

www.happillama.demon.co.uk until the start of September, at which point I am 
off to York University to do an MSc in Information Processing. (I am 
addicted to doing degrees).

[e-mail] [email vaild till start of sep 1997]

PS It is highly illegal to use this software in an industrial, commercial, 
educational, networked or otherwise non-home environment unless the 
institution or company concerned buys me a TOSHIBA Micro Notebook thingy, 
because they're only the size of a VHS cassette and you can play quake on 
them.

PPS It is extremely highly illegal for GOVERNMENT AGENCIES to use this 
software unless they buy me all of Sailor Moon on Laserdisc. [Japanese 
Language Version with Romanji subtitles if available] (And, yes, I want the 
movies in addition to the 200 regular episodes!)

PPPS It is unmentionably illegal for Harry Hill to use this software unless 
he agrees to do a 2nd TV series. [US hilite users! Harry Hill is a badger 
who dresses up as a carrot and has a comedy show on uk tv....]