APPLICATION NOTE #187 USING DESQVIEW 286/386 WITH XYWRITE III PLUS Rev. 02 DESQview, a product of Quarterdeck Office Systems, is a multitasking, multi-windowing control program. (Multi-tasking means that several programs are running at the same time.) The recommendations in this application note will help you configure DESQview 2.26 so that XyWrite III Plus can run in a DESQview window. AN OVERVIEW DESQview is designed for 8086-, 8088-, 80286- and 80386-based machines. It can run in as little as 512K RAM, but will use expanded memory if available. DESQview 386 includes an expanded memory manager, QEMM/386, which converts the extended memory on 80386 machines to expanded memory. DESQview uses expanded memory to perform multitasking; if expanded memory is not available but disk space is, DESQview can swap programs to a disk file, allowing new programs to take their place. However, this will suspend operation in the program which has been swapped to disk. See "Chapter 1: Installation" in the DESQview Quarterdeck Version 2 manual for more information about memory requirements. To facilitate multitasking, Quarterdeck added a new setting in version 2.26 of DESQview to handle keystroke conflicts between programs. XyWrite III Plus will not perform properly unless you are using either 2.26 or a later version of DESQview. DESQVIEW INSTALLATION We recommend that you install DESQview according to the instructions listed in "Chapter 1: Installation" of the DESQview Quarterdeck Version 2 manual. Remember, any memory management software (including QEMM/386) must be installed before DESQview. For QEMM/386 installation, see "Chapter 2: Installation" in the Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager 386 manual. An important part of the installation concerns configuring DESQview to avoid the keyboard conflicts mentioned earlier. The SETUP screen will be displayed during the DESQview installation. Choose the "Advanced Setup" option, then press "K" for the keyboard option. Next, press "Y" after the question, "Maintain separate shift states for each window? (Y/N):" If you have already installed DESQview, you can change the Keyboard parameter by typing SETUP at the DOS prompt, pressing , and then following the procedure in the preceding paragraph. When you install DESQview, it searches your computer's current drive for programs it recognizes. If DESQview finds XyWrite's program file (EDITOR.EXE), XyWrite III Plus will automatically be added to its list of program options, and will be displayed as a choice on DESQview's main menu. If EDITOR.EXE is not found, you must add XyWrite III Plus to DESQview through the "Add a Program" option once the DESQview installation is complete. To add XyWrite III Plus, perform the following steps: 1. Press Alt to display the DESQview menu. 2. Type "O" to open a window. 3. Type "AP" to choose the "Add a Program" option. 4. Select XyWrite III Plus as the program you want to add from the "Add a Program" option list. Configure the XyWrite Setup Program as outlined in the section which follows. CONFIGURING THE XYWRITE SETUP PROGRAM To finish configuring XyWrite after booting DESQview, perform the following steps: 1. Press Alt to display the DESQview menu. 2. Type "O" to open a window. 3. Type "CP" to choose the "Change Program" option. 4. Select XyWrite III Plus as the program you want to change. Make the following changes (if necessary) on the Change Program Options Screen: Program: Include drive, path, and filename of XyWrite's main file. For example: C:\XY\EDITOR.EXE Directory: Include drive and path where XyWrite files are located. For example: C:\XY Memory size (in K): Set to 384K (see Note #1) Writes directly to screen: Set to "N" (see Note #2) Press F1 to move to the Advanced Options Screen, then make the following entries: Runs in background: Yes Keyboard conflict: C KEYBOARD ISSUES There may be times when both XyWrite and DESQview use the same keystroke combinations to perform different tasks. When you run XyWrite in a DESQview window, DESQview always processes keystrokes first, and performs certain actions no matter what XyWrite has mapped to those keys. This means that XyWrite might never see some important key combinations. You can avoid this conflict by remapping the functions normally associated with these key combinations to another spot in the XyWrite keyboard file. We recommend that you remap the key combination Ctrl_Alt_Del. This combination is normally mapped with the function call EX in XyWrite, and is used to quit XyWrite. Pressing this key combination in DESQview while XyWrite is running will instantly close the XyWrite window. Any open files will not be saved. However, if you place the EX function on another key, you can use it to shut down XyWrite in the ordinary fashion (i.e., where you have the option to save the open file to disk). Note #1. Memory Needed by XyWrite. XyWrite III Plus requires 384K to run with the spelling checker, 256K without it. The memory size you specify for XyWrite in DESQview sets the minimum amount of memory the program needs. Note #2. Writing to the Screen. When not running under DESQview, XyWrite writes directly to the screen. However, Xywrite III Plus (versions 3.53 and later) checks for the presence of DESQview. If it finds DESQview, XyWrite III Plus will write to a DESQview buffer, instead of to the screen. DESQview will then put XyWrite III Plus on screen. Thus, you must specify that XyWrite III Plus (as well as any other program which is "DESQview aware") does not write directly to the screen. Note #3. Moving Commands to Different Keys. For information on reassigning keys, refer to "Modifying Keyboard Files" in Chapter 6 of the XyWrite III Plus Reference Guide.