Today an individual can derive enormous power from the computer. With an arsenal of tools the individual person can achieve more than a member of the most authoritative organization in 21-st century. If he/she knows how to do it, that is.

To many people it's just a daunting task to keep an overview of whatever is in their computer, let alone how to put it all to a productive use.

One thing that stupefies many people is the sheer mass of programs they have installed. Though there has developed a sort of de-facto standard in the recent years, still all the programs require a slightly different handling by the user. I know: Even if you are working daily on your computer, you just can't remember exactly the details of handling a program, if you want to do something that is a bit out of everyday use.

Notice that I spoke of the "programs" you have on your computer, not the "applications" (as they are commonly called). When you are getting a software and installing it, for the time being it's just a "dumb piece of software". To make it useful in any way, you have to launch it with a particular "configuration", perhaps you even have to do some modifications in other files before.

If you try to do that each time from scratch - you are lost. Not only is it UNPRODUCTIVE to type a complicated configuration each time manually, it is also TEDIOUS, and - after a few times, if you have to do it repeatedly - it's highly ERROR-PRONE.

In my mind, there's only way to master that problem:

1. Prepare a list of the applications you need most frequently. You can have one PROGRAM in several APPLICATIONS - simply by launching it with different configurations in the command line.
   
   
2. Make all the applications in your list easily accessible. It should be possible to launch an application by just a few key strokes or by clicking on the respective line in your list, ideally both, or by pressing one key only.

A tool that's addressing this problem goes by the simple name  DO .

 DO  is launched by the following command line:

For some uses you will want to keep a part of the code variable, e.g. if you want to apply  DO  to custom-launching from any other application. Then you should code it as placeholders  %1 ,  %2 , etc. (max.  %9 ) When you select a line from your list, the placeholders will be replaced by the respective argument ( argument1 ,  argument2 , etc. - max.  argument9 ).

Further details of  DO's  behavior you can control by a number of options. (For details see  DO's  online help that comes when you download  DO .)

Each line in the do_list  is coded in the following format:

By  label  you can assign any name to an application, whatever you think to be meaningful. (If you choose  DO  to respond to a single key stroke, all the labels should have different initial letters.)

applic_code  is the code mimicking the command line, as described above.

indicator  is an optional number meaning how you want the application to be shown upon launch: hidden, in normal size, maximized, etc. If omitted, it is shown in normal size. One objection that is brought up against  DO  sometimes by ardent followers of graphic user interfaces : "What do I need  DO ? By buttons in the Windows taskbar" (or whatever operating system they believe in) "I can have the same!" - Then I use to make them aware of the following facts:

1. By buttons in the taskbar you can implement basically only links to PROGRAMS, not to APPLICATIONS. When such a program pops up on screen, at first it is - empty. First you have to load the file you want to work on, you have to do a number of settings in order to make that program behave as it's needed - in the end you have "configurated" it to make it to the application you want. So, in effect you have only shifted the configuration effort from the command line to the inside of the program.
   (OK, savvy computer users know how to make configurated desktop shortcuts - which turn to buttons in the taskbar upon launching. For the average computer user, however, that's a tricky job!)
   
   
2. The taskbar is good only if you have a small number of buttons. Once you have some 20, 30 or more buttons, its getting cluttered. Hard to keep an overview then. Even the more since taskbar buttons are automatically made smaller by the operating system, when the limited taskbar space has to be shared among many buttons. Modern Windows systems, for example, provide a "tooltip" also to a taskbar button. This, however, you don't see unless you move the cursor on it.
   
   
3. If you want to avoid tiny taskbar buttons, you can resize the taskbar - sacrificing valuable screen space!

And so on. There are several other restrictions to taskbar buttons.