Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 10:14 PM, Ralf A. Quint <free...@gmx.net> wrote: > At 04:11 PM 7/26/2011, Rugxulo wrote: >> >>It's just hard to imagine why they would ever include LINK and EXE2BIN >>when nothing comes with DOS that can use them. BASICA/GW-BASIC surely >>didn't. I don't know, I'm not as savvy as some people here (Ralf?). > > Well, as you asked... ;-) > EXE2BIN and LINK where indeed include for quite a while as not every > compiler out there back then included it's own linker and > specifically some of the Microsoft compiler itself.
I just wonder why they ever stopped including it. (Wait, I forget now if DR-DOS 7.03 [1998] included EXE2BIN, lemme check ... YES!) Weird, again. It even explicitly says it works on a linker's output, but there is no linker included!! What kind of logic is that? Of course, no terribly huge surprise considering some of the other differences. EDIT is full-screen (but no BASIC, so debug [8086-686] is basically all you have for scripting). Weren't they the first, years before MS, to have full-screen EDIT? (No edlin at all!) Also, they include other weird stuff including (among others): lock, diskmap, netwars, password, rendir, taskmgr, touch, xdel, xdir, [Jim Kyle's] devload, loader, etc. etc. But they also include a lot of the same other common stuff: backup, restore, recover, assign, chkdsk, fdisk, diskopt [defrag], drmouse, deltree [.bat wrapper around xdel], graphics, graftabl, keyb, nlsfunc, emm386 [built-in DPMI and /MULTI drivers], share, nwcdex, xcopy, label, etc. etc. (BTW, this version had no ViewMax nor FAT32 nor LFN tools and only optional Personal Netware crud.) As you probably know, 7.03 is IBM PC-DOS 6.00 compatible (at least according to "normal" version detection) and even the kernel file(s) are named IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM. (Udo's EDR-DOS changed this back similar to older-style, I think.) > And IMHO, these are two tools that do not need to be included in a > "basic" release of FreeDOS, those are things that should be however > made available in an "developer" add-on or what ever you want to call it... Yes, like I said, I don't see how anybody can use it by default. >>What kinda bothers me about all these changes is that no suitable >>replacement is available. Sure, /olddos/ has QBASIC, but later >>versions didn't have even that. I don't know, it's weird. > > As far as the inclusion of a BASIC interpreter goes, the reasoning > might very likely have been that the number of user actually writing > their own BASIC programs compared to the number of overall users had > dropped significantly. Or perhaps they realized there were "too many" users creating "open source" BASIC apps! ;-) I mean, you didn't have a choice, it was an interpreter! ;-) I was always amazed at all the cool QB programs out there. They squeezed a lot out of it (160 kb RAM free, IIRC). >> My(uninformed, weak) guess is that they expected VBscript to replace >>that, but who knows. (God help anybody bothering with PowerShell, that >>syntax looks horrible! But hey, the advantage is that it comes >>installed by default. Unfortunately, you have to deal with the v1, v2, >>upcoming v3 [??] issue, which is bad. Bah, annoying.) > > That's all Windows stuff that shouldn't concern in here... Well, last I checked, MS *still* included edlin, debug, and edit95 in 32-bit Windows! Yes, all DOS apps, IIRC! But no QBASIC to be found. :-( I just meant that PowerShell and VBscript seemed to have (strangely) taken the place of (what used to be) QBASIC. Not exactly a friendly migration. :-/ >>In other words, I understand wanting to be compatible, but I consider >>BWBASIC (even if weak) or AWK to be better than nothing and at least a >>semi-familiar scripting tool for people using FreeDOS. At least, those >>would be more useful than EXE2BIN (to me) > > I would not call BWBASIC "weak" but including it would give users a > "basic" scripting tool which goes beyond the DOS batch scripting. Well, .BAT isn't exactly Turing complete, last I checked. It's not a programming language (though 4DOS or XP's CMD most likely qualifies). I know users can get a real programming tool themselves, I'm just saying, having it "built-in" is more useful overall. It's not that I think BWBASIC is bad, just far from complete or what most users would expect. But it's a lot better than nothing! > Don't know what AWK has to do with either BWBASIC, EXE2BIN or DEBUG, > but awk is certainly not DOS and therefor should IMHO not be included > in any "base" package... Well, no, not necessarily in "BASE", but I think it's pretty universally accepted (e.g. POSIX) and would be better than trying to (over)use Debug to do things that it wasn't designed for. Awk is just a language and not really DOS nor otherwise. I can't help but feel something should be there. > Seeing that there is so little "respect" for the old tools that made > out DOS, I am not sure if I should pick up one of my projects I had > started a few years back, a GW-BASIC clone, looks like there won't be > much interest for this at least in here. Or even bother to put the > finishing touches on BACKUP&RESTORE for that matter... :-( GW-BASIC is fine if you like it. Most will complain about line numbers. Personally I think the more languages the merrier. ;-) BACKUP and RESTORE is probably less important, esp. since most DOSes had incompatible versions. As mentioned, Roedy Green already wrote one that supported them all (w/ srcs!), but it's "non-military" use only (not GPL friendly, i.e. will never be in "BASE"). http://mindprod.com/products4.html#RESTORE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. 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