EPOC16 Environment Variables

EPOC16 always places a dollar sign ($) in the names of the environment variable it uses. Other applications should use names without a dollar sign in them.

Psion issues environment variable name prefixes to registered developers; these prefixes will contain dollar signs, but names based on them should have no further dollar signs.

The following environment variables are known.

$WS_FL

initial value of the window server settings (changeable using the wSystem call). Only applies to window server version 4.

Offset	Length	Description
0	2	Initial settings

$WS_FNTS

fonts used by the window server (version 4):

Offset	Length	Description
0	2	general system purposes
2	2	notifer and alerts
4	2	status window
6	2	special font holding the diamond symbol
8	2	medium digital clock
10	2	medium date
12	2	notifier/alert buttons
14	2	small status window clock

$WS_PW

Owner information: up to 218 bytes:

Offset	Length	Description
3	1	length of first line
4	1	offset of start of first line (always 18)
7	1	length of second line
8	1	offset of start of second line
11	1	length of third line
12	1	offset of start of third line
15	1	length of fourth line
16	1	offset of start of fourth line
18		Text of the information

The remaining bytes appear to be zero, except 2,6,10,14, which are 0x6. Why?

C$P#

parameters used by Link. [Workabout only]

C$P$

Offset	Length	Description
0	1	setting (0 = standard, 1 = special)

current keyboard setting. [Workabout only]

C$P@

current drive last time the command processor was exited. [Workabout only]

Offset	Length	Description
0	1	drive letter (e.g. $4D or %M for the internal drive)

C$PA

current path on drive A last time the command processor was exited. [Workabout only]

Offset	Length	Description
0	cstr	Current path

If the variable is unset, then the path is the root directory. Variables C$PB to C$PZ can also exist.

D$X

Alleged to be something to do with dialling settings

EM$

Full pathname of the 8087 emulator software.

Offset	Length	Description
0	cstr	Path name

P$D

Printer device.

Offset	Length	Description
0	1	48 = print device is a parallel port 49 = print device is a serial port 50 = print device is a file

P$F

Print to file name: up to 128 bytes:

Offset	Length	Description
0	cstr	Last file used for printing to file

P$M

Printer driver: up to 129 bytes.

Offset	Length	Description
0	1	printer driver model number
1	cstr	Printer driver library

A printer driver library can support several similar printers; the model number specifies which is selected.

P$S

Serial port setup: 12 bytes.

Unknown, but includes fields called tbaud, rbaud, frame, parity, hand, xoff, xon, flags, tmask, something called P_SRCHAR format

S$SVER

System screen version number. [Workabout only]

Offset	Length	Description
0	cstr	Version number as text

WP$SPEL

Used by the word processor (in some way when constructing its menus, probably to indicate that the spell checker is available.)

WP$THES

Used by the word processor (in some way when constructing its menus, probably to indicate that the thesaurus is available.)