Running wc3270 Without Installing It ------------------------------------ It is possible to run wc3270 without installing it. This allows it to be run from a USB flash drive or CD without modifying the system it is run on, or to be bundled with another application without needing to include the full wc3270 installation. When wc3270.exe or wc3270wiz.exe are run without doing a full software installation, they will not use the wc3270 Application Data directory. Instead, keymaps will be searched for in the working directory first, then in the directory where the executable file is. wc3270wiz.exe will write new keymaps to the working directory. wc3270 trace files will be written to the working directory as well. A new feature, auto-shortcut mode, also facilitates installation-free execution. Auto-shortcut mode is controlled by the wc3270.autoShortcut resource. If this resource is set to True in a session file or via the -S command-line option, then wc3270.exe will automatically create a temporary shortcut file (.LNK file) that matches the parameters in a session file (model number, character set, font, etc.) and re-run itself from the shortcut. (Without auto-shortcut mode, wc3270.exe will generally run as a Model 2 in a 25x80 console window, using the system default ANSI code page, and the system default font, which is usually not a Unicode font and thus cannot display all of the EBCDIC characters.) Note that auto-shortcut mode is set in all session files created by the Session Wizard, starting with version 3.3.10. Also note that all shortcuts created by the Session Wizard and by wc3270 itself as part of auto-shortcut mode include the +S command-line switch, to turn auto-shortcut mode off and avoid infinite looping. Thus, the easiest way to create a 'standalone' copy of wc3270 is to simply create a session file with the Session Wizard. Then you can run wc3270 via a 1-line .BAT file (substituting your session name for the session file): wc3270.exe xxx.wc3270 This command can also be passed to the 'system' library call from an application. Only wc3270.exe and the session file need to be present on the flash drive or copied to the target system. Note that custom keymaps can still be used in no-install mode. Keymap files can either be placed in the same directory as wc3270.exe, or the definitions can be included in the session file via a Session Wizard option ('Embed Keymaps'). Note also that it is possible to create a session file that does not specify a hostname. This allows the creation of session files that define things like the model number and character set, but allow the hostname to be entered interactively.