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V8Power Tools
Copyright 2015-2021 Jerome Shidel
Released under GPL v2.0 License.
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Putting the power of an 8-cylinder engine under the hood of DOS batch files.

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The V8Power Tools project is being designed in cooperation with
Jim Hall for the FreeDOS(TM) (http://www.freedos.org) operating system. It is
intended to expand the functionality of scripts written using batch files and
to provide them with a better looking user interface with increased
functionality.

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Compiling V8Power Tools

    Prerequisites:

        8086 or better cpu.
        EGA or better video adapter.
        FreeDOS(TM) 1.1 (http://www.freedos.org) or higher
        NASM for DOS version 2.14.02 (http://wwww.nasm.us) or newer

    Compiling:

        Insure the NASM directory is in your path spec.
        Download the latest sources from http://github.com/LoopZ/V8Power
        Run the mkV8.bat script.
        All executibles will be placed in newly created BIN directory.

    For lazy people, like me:

        Precompiled versions are available at http://up.lod.bz/V8Power.

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V8Power Tools Tested Compatibility

    FreeDOS 1.1+

Limited compatiblilty of advanced features (no "set /p" batch support):

    MS-DOS 6.2 and 6.22
    PC-DOS 7.0, 7.01 and 2000
    DR-DOS 7.03
    DOSBox (i/o redirection or querying using stdout will NOT work using the
        built-in DOSBox shell. However, they work fine in DOSBox when a
        compatible shell like FreeCOM is used)
    Windows 3.11 Shell
    Windows 98 Shell and Command Line
    Windows XP SP3 Shell (except vcursor)

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V8Power Tools Usage

Here is some basic information reguarding all utilities and how they operate.

    Options, values and hexidecimal numbers are not case specific /f white is
    the same as /F wHIte.

    Hexidecimal numbers may be prefixed with 0x to prevent them from being
    treated as base ten. (Example: 10 and 0x10)

    Spaces are mostly optional. /B7/f0 is the same as /B 7 /F 0.
    But, not / B7 / F0.

    To use a / or spaces in a value, put it in qoutes. Like "Jack and/or Jill".

    Use multiple qoutes to use quotes. Like "Jack's house" or 'Say "What?"'.

    Unless overriden, most utilities use the text attribute at the current
    cursor location.

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Here is color table used for all **/A**, **/F** and **/B** switches:

    Decimal     Hex         Label (Not case specific)

    0           0x00        Black
    1           0x01        Blue
    2           0x02        Green
    3           0x03        Cyan
    4           0x04        Red
    5           0x05        Magenta
    6           0x06        Brown
    7           0x07        Gray / Grey

    (Foreground /f and /a only)

    8           0x08        DarkGray / DarkGrey
    9           0x09        LightBlue
    10          0x0a        LightGreen
    11          0x0b        LightCyan
    12          0x0c        LightRed
    13          0x0d        LightMagenta
    14          0x0e        Yellow
    15          0x0f        White

Most of the individual tools that support color changing also support changing
the Blink/Intensity setting. However, most tools do not mention it.

	/BlinkOn    Enable the Blink/Intensity bit. (Start Blinking)
	/BlinkOff   Disable the Blink/Intensity bit. (Stop Blinking)

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The DOS command line (and batch files) is limited to approximately 128
characters. This could make it difficult for tools like vecho to print multiple
lines at once. Hoever, many tools such as vecho, vstr, etc support loading text
resources from a file using the /T switch. Generally, the /T switch is used
to provide "Translation" text for a batch. When loaded from file, the V8Power
Tools utility is limited to 10 kilobytes per lines. Beyond that, the utility
will ignore any remaining text on that line. 10kb is equal to 5 screens or more
of text and is overkill.
