This page lists the options and add-on products that are part of the A-Shell suite of products. The "options" are functions that are built in to A-Shell and must be enabled by a special encoding of the A-Shell license. "Add-ons," by contrast, are software modules that are purchased in addition to A-Shell and used in conjunction with it, and do not require any change to the A-Shell license.

PolyShell allows A-Shell/UNIX users to hot-key between multiple sessions of A-Shell on any supported terminal type.

ISAM-A is necessary for support of the d/ISAM (aka ISAMPLUS) file system.

A-Shell Telnet Service ("ATS") provides the means a way to run A-Shell/Windows via ordinary terminals or terminal emulators over Telnet connections. In other words it allows you to serve A-Shell/Windows connections on a NT or W2K or XP server in much the same way you would with A-Shell/UNIX or A-Shell/Linux on UNIX/Linux servers. Yet another way to look at it is as a text-based alternative to Windows Terminal Server and Citrix/Metaframe. For more information, see the A-Shell Telnet Service (ATS) Guide help file, which you can retrieve from the documentation page.

The A-Shell Imaging Toolkit for Windows is an add-on module consisting of a third-party imaging library and a number of A-Shell hooks to facilitate the displaying and printing of images directly within your application. It includes everything you need to evaluate the imaging capabilities of A-Shell/Windows.  The sample program and print file demonstrate loading, displaying, and printing using XCALL IMAGE and the //IMAGE GDI command.  Sample images are supplied in PCX, TIF, JPG, BMP formats.  The distribution package contains a time-limited evaluation copy of the image library and instructions for installing.  If you would like to purchase or evaluate this module, contact MicroSabio and we will email you the package.

Email Interface Module: EMAILX.SBX is a dynamically loadable XCALL subroutine module, along with some associated samples and utilities, which makes it easy to send emails directly from within your AlphaBasic programs. It includes support for HTML formatting and MIME attachments. The only requirement is the IP address of an SMTP server (either your own or one provided by your ISP) that will accept your connection at the time your program wants to send mail. (sendmail is not required.) Source code is provided, in case you feel the need to add your own customizations. For more information, see the EMAILX help file, which you can retrieve from the documentation page. If you would like to purchase or evaluate this module, contact MicroSabio and we will email you the software.

COM Module: A-Shell for Windows is an ActiveX or automation server. This is a technology based around COM (Component Object Model) which allows different applications or components to be developed separately and in different languages, and which are then able to communicate and interact with each other via a number of published interfaces. What this means is that the functionality of A-Shell can be controlled from external applications such as Visual Basic, and the functionality of A-Shell AlphaBASIC applications can be integrated to a degree with that of these other applications. In particular this ActiveX support allows XCALL subroutines to be written in any language which supports COM objects – most importantly this includes Visual Basic. The COM module reference manual is available from the documentation page.