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Attaching files to MOSS.EXE

Most DOS extenders allow you to attach a 32-bit ``extended'' program to the DOS extender executable itself, making the DOS extender and program appear to be one big DOS executable. MOSS takes this one step further: it allows you to attach not only the program to be run, but also an arbitrary number of additional files, to the DOS extender executable. The program can then open these files, read them, seek though them, etc., as if they were ordinary DOS files. (These embedded files cannot be written to, however.) Thus, if you want to distribute a program along with a set of tightly-associated data files for its use (e.g. graphics or sound files), you can bind those data files into the DOS executable itself so that users will only see one big DOS executable file.

While this feature is implemented and working in MOSS, generating a combined executable is not entirely trivial, and we haven't automated it yet. If you need to use this feature before we've fixed this problem, send a message to us on the MOSS mailing list and we'll either describe how to do it or provide a script or program to do it for you.



Bryan Ford