Pretty please: I have had an idea for a potentially generally useful utility for managing multiple executions of a command script. It would be a small Windows executable but I don't have the skills to knock something like that up in non-exponential time. I can write a specification though:
Concept
The utility pops up a window with fields in which the user can configure the required process per pass, and to control the repeat execution of the process. I envisage this being in two tabs - one for defining the process and the other for controlling the execution. As a working title let's call it "BatchRun".
The process tab offers a number of text fields to enter strings that are assigned to replaceable parameters in a larger edit box which sets up the process itself, using shell commands the same as you would to create a bat file. Running the process sends the commands in the edit window to the Windows shell, and having separate fields for parameters makes them easier to tweak than having to edit the process window.
The execution control tab has counters. The cumulative total counter increments each time the process is executed, and has a button to reset the count to zero. A batch size field pre-loads the batch counter, which decrements per execution until it reaches zero, and execution stops. Four buttons "run once", "run batch", "stop at end", and "abort" trigger (or kill) execution. An output box presents the standard and error streams from the process.
So, for example, my newsletter print process could define the process as:
Code:
%1 = newsletter.prn
%2 = C:\docs\test\
%3 = EPSON78163A
lpr -S %3 -P raw %2%1
...and then on my execution control tab I would set the batch size to 20, trigger off a batch and then go and do something else until it came to the end of that batch when I have to reload the printer, and finish when the cumulative counter reaches 120. Even better if the utility can sound a beep when the batch counter reaches zero.
To make the utility more universally useful, there could also be ways to use the counter values as parameters in the process script. My example has a single line script, but I wouldn't expect it to be limited to one line. There's also no reason other .bat files couldn't be called up.
Then we want some way to save the configuration and call it up again another time. This could be done by writing out a file and being able to read it in (and having the config file associated with the utility would mean the config file could be opened directly), or maybe by storing the config within the actual executable and re-writing that (save under different names to create a variety of BatchRun configurations).
Any volunteers?
or maybe it works sometimes and not others (time will tell). Given that I have been searching for a symbolic method to address the printer, don't you think that's exactly what I would have tried first time I tried out the lpr command? It's gone from my short-term memory.
