[Coco] Nitros9 and Smartwatch

[L. Curtis Boyle]

Robert is correct in that some things have changed - the ‘-‘ sign on a lot of commands is one. TMODE and XMODE are radically different than the original OS-9 (and if you pull down some older OS-9 programs that fork out to these commands, they will not work properly without patching). So, you are correct in that we need some proper documentation (even just documenting differences/additions would be helpful).
Another issue is that some commands in later NitrOS-9 (DIR is a prime example for me) have actually gone backwards from original NitrOS-9. As of version 2.01 of NitrOS-9, DIR had wildcard support (both * and ?), and extra options for recursive directory searches, etc. Then, for some unknown (to me) reason, that new “standard version” disappeared, and it went back to stock OS-9 in functionality, but with the ‘-‘ now required. And there are other examples like this as well.


L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net

TRS-80 Color Computer Games website
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/coco_game_list.html



> On Dec 10, 2016, at 2:54 PM, Robert Gault <robert.gault at att.net> wrote:
> 
> To add to Bill's comments, the NitrOS-9 WIKI is at
> https://sourceforge.net/p/nitros9/wiki/Main_Page/
> 
> There are some differences between OS-9 and NitrOS-9 which are minor but confusing. Many of the commands can take parameters and some have been changed.
> For example, in OS-9 the command dir can have two parameters: x display current execution directory, e display full description of each file. However, in NitrOS-9 these parameters now require the - sign: dir -x   or  dir -e .
> 
> As it happens, the built in Help function indicates the syntax for dir.
> help dir
> 
> and you will get
> 
> Syntax: Dir [<opts>] [<path>]
> Usage : Displays formatted list of file names in a directory
> Opts  :
>  -e = extended dir
>  -x = execution dir
> 
> Unfortunately not all commands or programs are included in Help but you could edit the SYS/helpmsg file to include new command/program names. Also some programs have their own built-in help messages. Unfortunately many of these have been turned off in the current NitrOS-9 build. You could edit the source code to turn on the built-in help and recompile the programs.
> 
> Robert
> 
> 
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