The Program Information Files have stayed a long time with the PC. They origi- nated from IBMs Topview, were carried on by DoubleView and DesqView, and today they are used by Windows and Windows NT. The PIF files store additional information about executables that are foreign to the running multitasking system such as ressource usage, keyboard and mouse virtualization and hotkeys. The original (Topview) PIF had a size of 171h bytes, after that, there come the various extensions for the different operating environments. The different extensions are discussed in their own sections. OFFSET Count TYPE Description 0000h 1 byte reserved 0001h 1 byte Checksum 0002h 30 char Title for the window 0020h 1 word Maximum memory reserved for program 0022h 1 word Minimum memory reserved for program 0024h 63 char Path and filename of the program 0063h 1 byte 0 - Do not close window on exit other - Close window on exit 0064h 1 byte Default drive (0=A: ??) 0065h 64 char Default startup directory 00A5h 64 char Parameters for program 00E5h 1 byte Initial screen mode, 0 equals mode 3 ? 00E6h 1 byte Text pages to reserve for program 00E7h 1 byte First interrupt used by program 00E8h 1 byte Last interrupt used by program 00E9h 1 byte Rows on screen 00EAh 1 byte Columns on screen 00EBh 1 byte X position of window 00ECh 1 byte Y position of window 00EDh 1 word System memory ?? whatever 00EFh 64 char ?? Shared program path 012Fh 64 char ?? Shared program data file 016Fh 1 word Program flags EXTENSION:PIF,DVP OCCURENCES:PC PROGRAMS:Topview, DesqView, Windows REFERENCE:see DDJ #202, July 1993, QuarterDeck SDK SEE ALSO:Windows PIF, Windows NT PIF VALIDATION:
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