Adapting MIDAS to your personal needs

There are commands in MIDAS which help you in tailoring MIDAS to your personal taste and needs.
Maybe the most important one is CREATE/COMMAND with which you can add abbreviated and alias command names. As a next step, try out CREATE/DEFAULTS in order to set up your own defaults for frequently used commands, e.g. size and location of display and graphics windows in an X11-environment. The command SET/MIDAS_SYSTEM has an extended set of options to let you change internal MIDAS features, ranging from selecting your preferred text editor (to be used e.g. in REPORT/PROBLEM) to choosing your own MIDAS prompt. With the command SET/BUFFER you modify the size of the internal command buffer.
If you have a MIDAS command procedure named `login.prg' in the directory specified by MID_WORK, this procedure will be automatically executed whenever you get into the MIDAS environment, i.e. when you type INMIDAS (inmidas) or GOMIDAS (gomidas).  Therefore, the procedure login.prg  is the place where you should put all the commands needed to adapt MIDAS.

!+
! MIDAS procedure login.prg
! personal set up file for A. S. Tronomer       940815
!+
CREATE/COMMAND RK READ/KEYWORD !define abbreviations
CREATE/COMMAND WK WRITE/KEYWORD
CREATE/COMMAND RD READ/DESCR
CREATE/COMMAND WD WRITE/DESCR
CREATE/COMMAND XH CREATE/GUI HELP
CREATE/COMMAND SMOOTH/SPECIAL @@ mysmooth !define a new command
!
CREATE/DEFAULT CREATE/GRAPH ? 400,800 !size for graphic window
CREATE/DEFAULT CREATE/DISP ? 600,600,400,400 !size+loc for display window
!
SET/MIDAS_SYS edit=vi user=user env=midhost
SET/MIDAS_SYS prompt=Mid$\{$mid$sess(11:12)$\}$

Assuming you are working with MIDAS unit 22, this procedure will change the MIDAS prompt to Mid22, use `vi' as editor when you run the REPORT/PROBLEM command, define the commands RK, WK, RD, WD, XH, SMOOTH/SPECIAL, and override the preset defaults for CREATE/GRAPHICS, CREATE/DISPLAY. Setting the environmment to midhost means, that all commands which MIDAS does not understand are passed on to the host system. Thus, instead of $ls you can directly enter ls at the MIDAS prompt. Also, the user level is set to USER; cf. the following section.