DOS Plus - User Interface

User Interface

DOS Plus attempts to present the same command-line interface as MS-DOS. Like MS-DOS, it has a command-line interpreter called COMMAND.COM. There is an AUTOEXEC.BAT file, but no CONFIG.SYS (except for FIDDLOAD, an extension to load some field-installable device drivers in some versions of DOS Plus 2.1). The major difference the user will notice is that the bottom line of the screen contains status information similar to:

The left-hand side of the status bar shows running processes. The leftmost one will be visible on the screen; the others (if any) are running in the background. The right-hand side shows the keyboard layout in use (UK8 in the above example), the printer port assignment, the keyboard caps lock and num lock status, and the current time. If a DOS program is running, the status line is not shown. DOS programs cannot be run in the background.

The keyboard layout in use can be changed by pressing Ctrl, Alt and one of the function keys F1-F5.