A-Shell Consolidated Reference

The -m switch forces the A-Shell/Windows window to launch in maximized mode, and it also eliminates the min/max/close buttons and system menu from the window title bar. The idea is to make it very difficult for the user to unilaterally or accidentally resize or close the window. This can be useful in situations where you want to, er, minimize, the windows-ness of the application.  

The -min switch forces the ATE window to launch in minimize mode. This is similar to the (A-Shell) –z and –zi switches, except that there will be a normal icon on the task bar, which you can click on to make the window visible.

History

2020 March, A-Shell 6.5.1677:  This is a refinement to the existing -min command line switch when used with ATE. Like -zate, the -min switch launches ATE in a minimized state and leaves it that way after connecting to the server. This has the advantage of allowing you to interactively make the window visible—perhaps for debugging—by clicking on the task bar icon. But unlike the hidden status set by -zate, the minimized status set by -min affects not just the main window but any dialogs as well.

The -z switch causes the A-Shell session to be totally invisible, not even showing up in the task list. It will still show in SYSTA. This can be useful for special situations such as background daemons, CGI commands, etc.

To make an invisible window reappear, the job itself can execute XCALL MIAMEX, MX_SHOWWINDOW, where FLAG is anything between 1 and 11, covering the various ways in which a window can be displayed; see the MIAMEX.BAS sample program for more details. Or, you can remotely force the job to reappear using SEND jobname> !—that is, send it a message consisting of a single exclamation point. This latter method uses the InterJob Communication (IJC) system which operates on a frequency set by the IJCFREQ=<seconds> parameter in the miame.ini.

This is similar to the other -z switches in A-Shell, variations on hiding the window, except that it carries over to after the connection with the server is established. This would mainly be useful if you were confident that the combination of the server login startup commands and the ATE login text—as specified in the ATE configuration or specified via the -logintext switch—will result in launching a program that creates its own window, or perhaps carries out a task that you don't want to make visible.

The -zi switch is similar to –z except that it also adds an A-Shell icon to the taskbar notification area (aka "system tray"). You can thereby make the window visible by double-clicking on the icon.