how to allow drag and drop from explorer to dos prompt

G

GS

for a regualr user's dos prompt (c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe), how could
one enable receive of drag and drop from explorer?

right now I get that circle picture when I try to drop on DOS prompt window
 
C

Colin Barnhorst

First of all it is not DOS. There is none in Windows 2000, XP, or Vista.
The command window is a text interface called a command line interpreter.
You cannot drag and drop graphical objects on a text window.
 
R

Richard G. Harper

You cannot. The program in question (CMD.EXE in this case) must have drag
and drop handlers built into it and must register itself as a drag and drop
user when it loads. It has none, can register none, and therefore cannot be
either the source or target of a drag and drop operation.
 
B

blank

First of all it is not DOS. There is none in Windows 2000, XP, or
Vista. The command window is a text interface called a command line
interpreter. You cannot drag and drop graphical objects on a text
window.

Similar to cmd.exe, part of DOS (command.com) was a command line
interpreter. Since it was also the main user interface (in Windows it is
Explorer.exe), it is what many call "DOS", so they also call something that
looks similar (such as a cmd.exe window) "DOS" - like they call what they
see of Explorer "Windows".

I suspect that most know that cmd.exe isn't MS-DOS (but neither was
command.com), and don't need to be told this every time (except by those
trying to show how clever they are). Ones who don't know this already
probably wouldn't really get the distinction anyway, and probably wouldn't
even be opening a "cmd.exe text command line interpreter window".

If, as you say, "graphical objects" was what was meant in the original
question, you can't actually drag and drop those between a lot of program
windows. This has nothing to do with whether they are "DOS" or not, but
whether they know how to handle graphical objects.

What you CAN do is drag a filename from Explorer onto a "cmd.exe text
command line interpreter window" (wouldn't "DOS" be simpler?), and it is
received and pasted into the current command line. At least it is in my
"cmd.exe text command line interpreter window". If this is what the
original question referred to, all I can say is that it has always worked
for me and I don't know how it might get disabled.
 
S

skidz

Similar to cmd.exe, part of DOS (command.com) was a command line
interpreter. Since it was also the main user interface (in Windows it
is Explorer.exe), it is what many call "DOS", so they also call
something that looks similar (such as a cmd.exe window) "DOS" - like
they call what they see of Explorer "Windows".

I suspect that most know that cmd.exe isn't MS-DOS (but neither was
command.com), and don't need to be told this every time (except by
those trying to show how clever they are). Ones who don't know this
already probably wouldn't really get the distinction anyway, and
probably wouldn't even be opening a "cmd.exe text command line
interpreter window".

If, as you say, "graphical objects" was what was meant in the original
question, you can't actually drag and drop those between a lot of
program windows. This has nothing to do with whether they are "DOS"
or not, but whether they know how to handle graphical objects.

What you CAN do is drag a filename from Explorer onto a "cmd.exe text
command line interpreter window" (wouldn't "DOS" be simpler?), and it
is received and pasted into the current command line. At least it is
in my "cmd.exe text command line interpreter window". If this is what
the original question referred to, all I can say is that it has always
worked for me and I don't know how it might get disabled.


Actually, many that use the term "DOS" probably have never actually used
MS-DOS.
 
D

DevilsPGD

In message <[email protected]> "Richard
G. Harper said:
You cannot. The program in question (CMD.EXE in this case) must have drag
and drop handlers built into it and must register itself as a drag and drop
user when it loads. It has none, can register none, and therefore cannot be
either the source or target of a drag and drop operation.

This does appear to be a change in Vista, as dropping on console windows
was supported by previous versions of Windows.

I'm almost surprised I hadn't noticed, but I mainly use JPSoft's TCC
these days, it still supports drop-to-paste like older versions of
Windows did.
 
C

Colin Barnhorst

Having been a DOS user from about 2.11 on I imagine that I know what
command.com, io.sys, and msdos.sys, etc are. But thank you anyway.
 
D

DevilsPGD

In message <[email protected]> "Colin
Barnhorst said:
First of all it is not DOS. There is none in Windows 2000, XP, or Vista.
The command window is a text interface called a command line interpreter.
You cannot drag and drop graphical objects on a text window.

You could in 2000 and XP, but I don't see any way to enable this in
Vista.
 
B

blank

Similar to cmd.exe, part of DOS (command.com) was a command line
interpreter. Since it was also the main user interface (in Windows it
is Explorer.exe), it is what many call "DOS", so they also call
something that looks similar (such as a cmd.exe window) "DOS" - like
they call what they see of Explorer "Windows".

I suspect that most know that cmd.exe isn't MS-DOS (but neither was
command.com), and don't need to be told this every time (except by
those trying to show how clever they are). Ones who don't know this
already probably wouldn't really get the distinction anyway, and
probably wouldn't even be opening a "cmd.exe text command line
interpreter window".

If, as you say, "graphical objects" was what was meant in the original
question, you can't actually drag and drop those between a lot of
program windows. This has nothing to do with whether they are "DOS"
or not, but whether they know how to handle graphical objects.

What you CAN do is drag a filename from Explorer onto a "cmd.exe text
command line interpreter window" (wouldn't "DOS" be simpler?), and it
is received and pasted into the current command line. At least it is
in my "cmd.exe text command line interpreter window". If this is what
the original question referred to, all I can say is that it has always
worked for me and I don't know how it might get disabled.

Sorry - I hadn't noticed that I had moved from an XP group window to a
Vista one. It appears that in Vista this does no longer work. I hadn't
noticed this before, as I usually do cut and paste instead of drag-and-
drop.

I still think DOS is a reasonable nickname for a command window. I
sometimes even call a terminal session to Linux a DOS window (but I
almost never use a GUI in Linux, so it always looks like that).
 
M

Michael

GS said:
for a regualr user's dos prompt (c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe), how
could one enable receive of drag and drop from explorer?

right now I get that circle picture when I try to drop on DOS prompt
window
I was able to drag-and-drop objects from Windows Explorer to Command
Prompt window in Windows Server 2003 and lower but I can't do that in Vista.
 

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