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  The Wizard's Apprentice  

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. With a few common batch techniques, the Wizard's Apprentice will allow you to create wizards with style!

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
  • You can even play a sound when the dialog appears.
• The choice that the user made, or the text that was typed, is returned in environment variables.

What's new

April 2003

The latest version of the Wizard's Apprentice is version 1.3. These are the most important improvements in this version:

• The Wizard's Apprentice now supports unlimited size for the value of environment variables. This is especially useful if you select many items from a listbox.
• A new feature was added to the file browser: filter strings. They will allow you to let the user choose files with a certain extension more easily.