Abbreviation
of terminate and stay resident. Refers
to DOS programs
that can be memory
resident (remaining in memory at all
times once they are loaded). Calendars,
calculators,
spell
checkers, thesauruses, and notepads are often set up as TSRs so
that you can instantly access them
from within another program. TSRs are sometimes called pop-up
programs because they can pop up in applications.
When you install a TSR, you define a special key sequence
(usually a control
character) that will invoke the
TSR program. You can then press this hot
key from within any application to run the TSR
program. Many programs can be installed as a TSR, but TSRs reduce
the amount of memory available to other programs. In addition, not
all TSRs interact well with each other. You may have difficulties,
therefore, if you try to keep too many TSRs in main
memory at once.
TSRs are unnecessary with multitasking
operating
systems such as Windows, OS/2, and the
Mac OS.
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