Auto-start for Hal

[Psych]

Hi All

I want to start Hal by sending a command from within a visual basic program I am writing.

Also, I want hal to automatically start in his chat window (not in the options menu)

The problem is that if I use the 'shell' command to load hals .exe file, I always seem to get the options menu.

Has anyone any ideas of how to autostart hal straight into his chat window.

Thanks

Phil

[vonsmith]

I'm still relatively new to Hal and I haven't tried v5.0 Beta yet. Sometimes, I don't know why, my Hal 4.5 pauses briefly at the startup screens and then starts Hal automatically. However it seems what you are looking for is a command line argument to force Hal to start a certain way. Command line arguments typically take the form of: PROGRAM.EXE /ARG1 /ARG2 /ARGx

Microsoft calls arguments "switches" in the context of Windows Explorer. Some examples are:

Explorer /n
This command opens an Explorer window using the default setting. This is usually the root of the drive on which Windows is installed.
Explorer /e
This command starts Windows Explorer using the default view.
Explorer /e,C:Windows
This command starts Windows Explorer using the default view, with the focus on C:Windows.

I don't know if Hal uses command line switches in this fashion. What you need is a switch something like "HalAsst.exe /run" which would force Hal to bypass the menu. Alternately switches could select the "Hal brain" to use or other features.

Does anyone in the forum know what, if any, command line switches Hal will accept? If there aren't any currently then I would politely suggest to Zabaware to consider adding this relatively simple capability. I don't intend to make work for Zabaware, this is just a suggestion.

= vonsmith =