IBM HandShaker (also known as Connect Commander or simply CN) is a

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage computer files, files and folder (computing), folders. The most common Computer file#Operations, operations performed on files or groups of files incl ...

for the

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

operating system, developed in

1991 It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. During the year, the Soviet Union Dissolution of the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving Post-soviet states, fifteen sovereign republics and the Commonwealth of Independent State ...

. It supported both Russian and English

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

s, featured a built-in

screensaver A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor s ...

, and was widely used by professional

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

s as a replacement for

DOS Shell DOS Shell is a file manager that debuted in MS-DOS and PC DOS version 4.0, released in June 1988. It was no longer included in MS-DOS version 6, but remained part of the Supplemental Disk. The Supplemental Disk could be ordered or could b ...

, due to its numerous extended capabilities.

History

The software was developed in

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

, Ukraine, by programmers Yan Balter and Dmitry Orlov starting in

. The final version of IBM HandShaker (7.5) was released in

1999 1999 was designated as the International Year of Older Persons. Events January * January 1 – The euro currency is established and the European Central Bank assumes its full powers. * January 3 – The Mars Polar Lander is launc ...

, and an alternate version under the name Connect Commander (8.0) appeared in

2001 The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...

Description

Initially conceived as an integrated development environment for embedded systems and hardware programming, IBM HandShaker eventually became a file manager featuring a primitive built-in

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

and

debugger A debugger is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" programs). Common features of debuggers include the ability to run or halt the target program using breakpoints, step through code line by line, and display ...

. Like DOS Navigator, it was written in

Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Pascal (programming language), Pascal running on the operating systems CP/M, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS. ...

using the Turbo Vision framework.

Features

File manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage computer files, files and folder (computing), folders. The most common Computer file#Operations, operations performed on files or groups of files incl ...

in the style of

Norton Commander Norton Commander (NC) is a discontinued prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing (later acquired in 1990 by the NortonLifeLock, Symantec corporation). NC provides a text-based user i ...

, with advanced support for treating directories as files and

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

s as directories. * Multi-window

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

comparable to MultiEdit; * Multi-window

hex editor A hex editor (or ''binary file editor'' or ''byte editor'') is a computer program that allows for manipulation of the fundamental Binary file, binary data that constitutes a computer file. The name 'hex' comes from 'hexadecimal', a standard numer ...

; * dBase-compatible

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

support with regex-based search, field editing, record deletion, memo field viewing (text and hex), clipboard interaction; * Compiler for the internal

to control the text editor and

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

; * Keyboard macro editor; *

Terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

with ANSI.SYS compatibility and background operation; * Phonebook with modem-based autodialing; * Auxiliary tools (programmer’s calculator,

disassembler A disassembler is a computer program that translates machine language into assembly language—the inverse operation to that of an assembler. The output of disassembly is typically formatted for human-readability rather than for input to an asse ...

, memory editor,

alarm clock An alarm clock or alarm is a clock that is designed to alert an individual or group of people at a specified time. The primary function of these clocks is to awaken people from their night's sleep or short naps; they can sometimes be used for o ...

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A calendar date, date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is ...

, ASCII table, background printing system with customizable fonts,

CD player A CD player is an electronic device that plays audio compact discs, which are a digital audio, digital optical disc data storage format. CD players were first sold to consumers in 1982. CDs typically contain recordings of audio material such a ...

); * Context-sensitive, extensible

help system Help may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Help'' (2010 film), a Bollywood horror film * ''Help'' (2021 theatrical film), a British psychological thriller film * ''Help'' (2021 TV film), a TV film about the COVID-19 pand ...

with regex search, cross-file linking, custom help file creation, and program launching from help entries; * Program settings menu (color schemes, working directories, keyboard and mouse modes, and many other options); *

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

viewer with hyperlink navigation and automatic conversion between

code pages In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable character (computing), characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a s ...

(e.g., CP866,

Windows-1251 Windows-1251 is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover languages that use the Cyrillic script such as Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian Cyrillic, Macedonian and other languages. On the web, it is the second most-used ...

KOI8-R KOI8-R (RFC 1489) is an 8-bit character encoding derived from the KOI-8 encoding by the programmer Andrei Chernov in 1993 and designed to cover Russian, which uses the Russian subset of a Cyrillic script. KOI-8, on its turn, is an 8-bit exten ...

Notes

References

{{Reflist

External links

The IBM HandShaker (Connect)

CN -- Connect or IBM HandShaker
DOS software Software using Turbo Vision