Article 207 of comp.sys.acorn:
Path: rusmv1!ira.uka.de!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcsun!ukc!acorn!RMokady
From: RMokady@acorn.co.uk (Ran Mokady)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Creation of a Taskwindow
Message-ID: <6846@acorn.co.uk>
Date: 6 May 91 00:26:32 GMT
References: <1744@nlcvx.convex.nl>
Sender: rmokady@acorn.co.uk
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England
Lines: 60

In article <1744@nlcvx.convex.nl> boerhout@convex.nl (Jan Boerhout) writes:

>I want to be able to start a program in a task window from an obey file
>without having to create a task window manually using !Edit and without
>having to start my program manually in this window.
>
>Has somebody figured out how to do this?

I don't think there is a way of doing it properly, but you could try the
following BASIC program:  

REM >Task
SYS "OS_GetEnv" TO command$
D%=INSTR(command$,"$")
IF D%=0 THEN ERROR EXT 0,"Missing TaskWindow command"
DIM block% 256, task% 5
$task%="TASK"
block%!0=36
block%!12=0
block%!16=&808c5
$(block%+20)="ShellCLI_Task"+CHR$0
SYS "Wimp_Initialise",200,!task%,"TaskWindow"
SYS "Wimp_SendMessage",17,block%,0
SYS "OS_Byte",138,0,13
FOR I%=D%+1 TO LEN(command$)
 SYS "OS_Byte",138,0,ASC(MID$(command$,I%,1))
NEXT I%
SYS "OS_Byte",138,0,13
REPEAT SYS "Wimp_Poll",0,block% TO R%:UNTIL R%=0
END
          
Save it as "Task" in your library directory, and then in your obey file put:

Task $<command>    

Where <command> is the command you want executed in the task window.

For this to work you have to have !Edit and the TaskWindow modules loaded.

  The BASIC program sends a message to !Edit telling it to open a
TaskWindow, it then inserts the anything following the $ on the command used
to start it into the keyboard buffer, so that it is picked up by !Edit as
input for the task. The first OS_Byte 138,0,13 is to reduce the risk of
something being typed in from the keyboard before it has a chance to insert
the codes into the buffer, but it is still not perfect if you happen to be
typing things in while it is running. The last line before the END is used
to enable you to have two *Task commands one after the other, if it is
missed out, two task windows will be opened, but both commands will be run
in the same window.

 If anyone knows of a better way to do this, please let me know !

                                 Ran.