remove your SD card (this message applies to both SD cards) and once you press Y on the prompt, NextZXOS will perform the REMOUNT command as discussed earlier, thus remounting any physical drives you've unmounted.
File and drive management operations with the Browser is one facet of what it can do. The most important function it has however is to recognise and launch files of various types when we highlight them and press ENTER (or SYMBOL SHIFT + ENTER – see immediately below). It's able to do so due to its extensible nature using a simple, specially formed text file called browser.cfg that's located under c:/nextzxos/. The Browser also offers a way to assign TWO types of launching for a filetype. This is accomplished by adding two lines in browser.cfg. For example we could LOAD a .bas file or convert it to plain text using the .bas2txt dot command. The first action would be launched by ENTER and the second one with SYMBOL SHIFT + ENTER
Each line of browser.cfg contains information formed in the following fashion:
TYPE LINE
where TYPE is a 3 letter file type (e.g. BAS) followed by LINE which is a sequence of NextBASIC commands separated by colon characters as per usual but prefixed with one of the following symbols:
| Prefix | Meaning |
|---|---|
| : | Return to Menu afterwards |
| < | Return to Browser afterwards |
| ; | Return to NextBASIC afterwards |
The NextBASIC commands that follow, use the following placeholders:
| Character | Meaning |
|---|---|
| | | Is replaced by the short filename as read by the Browser18 |
| "| | Is replaced by the long filename as read by the Browser and must be terminated by a matching quote (") |
| £ | Is replaced by language code (ie. en for English, es for Spanish etc) |
Additionally, if a quote character is needed inside the NextBASIC command sequence, it can be escaped using the backwards slash character as follows ".
Wildcards can be used to replace parts of a file type (* for the remainder, ? for only one character)
Browser.cfg can be edited using any standard text editor. More information about the Browser and how to configure it can be found by launching its guide file with:
.guide browser
The NextBASIC editor is excellent for editing large programs, however for single use commands like the ones for file management or the dot commands we have been examining on a case-by-case basis, it can be a bit cumbersome to use, especially since the underlying NextBASIC listing will appear after every direct command. For that reason, NextZXOS includes a special version of the NextBASIC editor, that hides (but does not erase) any NextBASIC program that you may be editing and offers an uncluttered view of the screen making it easier to enter commands directly to the operating system. Unlike other operating systems, the NextZXOS command line still gives full access to NextBASIC and doesn't include a prompt like the one available on CP/M which we'll examine a bit further. To access the Command Line interface, press EDIT to bring up the NextZXOS menu, select Command Line and press ENTER. While in the Command Line interface you have the op-
18 This functionality is recommended with dot commands that cannot deal with LFNs.
ZX Spectrum Next User Manual, 3rd Edition (ISBN 978-1-5272-5496-1), written and illustrated by Phoebus R. Dokos. Copyright © 2020-2024 Phoebus Dokos / SpecNext Ltd. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. This is a transcription and can contain errors; check any doubt against the printed page.