Introduction
Batch files still are a good way to get things done. As long as the things are
simple, a batch file can be exactly the right way to do it: easily written,
portable, and no need to install anything to get it to work. There is one
big shortcoming of batchfiles though: interactivety. There is hardly a nice
way to ask the user questions. In the old days, in MSDOS, there was no way at
all to ask questions; then came CHOICE, a very primitive utility
to ask Yes/No kind of questions and get an error level back. And that was it.
Now there is the Wizard's Apprentice. It will allow you to ask questions from
a batch file, using Windows dialog boxes in the so-called Wizard style: large
dialogs asking one question at a time, with a Back button, a Next button and
a Cancel button.
What does it look like?
Here is a screenshot of the Wizard's Apprentice showing a welcome text.
Here is another screenshot from the same program, asking to choose a
language from a list.
Here's a message box, that allows you to ask Yes/No questions:
Features
- When you run the Wizard's Apprentice, it will display a dialog on the
screen. The Wizard's Apprentice can display the following types of
dialogs.
- Message box
- A Message box with the information, exclamation or stop icon,
or with the question icon and an OK and a Cancel button.
- Text screen
- A wizard-style dialog displaying only text, e.g. a welcome screen.
- File contents
- A wizard-style dialog with a box with a scroll bar on it, in which
a file is displayed. Can be used to display a license text.
- Edit field
- A wizard-style dialog with an edit field on it, where the user can
type text.
- Radio buttons
- A wizard-style dialog with a set of radio buttons on it.
- Checkboxes
- A wizard-style dialog with a set of check boxes on it.
- Listbox
- A wizard-style dialog with a listbox on it. This listbox is either
a single-selection box, where you can select exactly one item, or a
multiple-selection listbox, from which you can select zero or more items.
- Combo box
- A wizard-style dialog with a combo box on it. A combo box allows you
to select an item from a list, or type it yourself.
- File- or directory browser
- A wizard-style dialog with an edit field on it with a Browse button
next to it. Pressing the Browse button will either show an open file
dialog, or a directory tree dialog.
- The Wizard's Apprentice will return an errorlevel that indicates
which button the user pressed.
- The appearance of the wizard-style dialog can be completely controlled:
- Set the title of the dialog
- Set the text contents of the dialog
- Set the sidebar picture of the dialog
- Set the labels of the buttons
- Set the icon of the dialog
- Set the signature text on the bottom-left corner of the dialog
- The choice that the user made, or the text that was typed, is returned
in environment variables.
Dion Nicolaas
dionnicolaas@users.sourceforge.net
The Wizard's Apprentice's Home
http://wizapp.sf.net
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