SEND under UNIX supports a /W switch to send a "Windows" message if the terminal is a ZTERM or ATE workstation. Otherwise it acts just like SEND without a switch.

The Windows version of the message launches an external application, asmsg.exe which must be in the path on the workstation. The best place to put it is in the directory where ATE or ZTERM is launched from—typically c:\program files\microsabio\ate\bin or c:\program files\cool.stf\zterm for windows—although it could also be the Windows directory.

The idea of using an external program to display the message is to allow sites or resellers to customize the message utility. We provide a very simple example in the SYS: directory of the UNIX releases.

If you want to create your own, the requirement is that it support the following command line format:

asmsg.exe /T:title /M:message

To distribute the utility, you may want to add logic to your application startup to use the ATSYNC mechanism, or a standard ZTERM file transfer, to copy it from the server to the workstation. The utility is small enough that this will take nearly no time at all. We would have done this automatically within the message handler, but since file transfers can sometimes require user intervention, it seems questionable to get into that during a signal receiving routine.

Note that the existing awmsg.exe which is distributed with A-Shell/Windows and used by default with SEND.LIT will work fine with the UNIX version (just copy it to asmsg.exe). The only difference between it and the standard release asmsg.exe is that asmsg.exe displays a much bigger window.