Good to know that there was a Windows trial , even if it was just a
GUI front-end for DOS version. I think that Corel Infocentral had
something of Dataperfect too, besides people say that Bruce developed
it, not Lew, but I think they were trying to experiment, I guess, may be
Lew knows something about it. You touched a good point Don. Back to the
old days , a real office suite must had some kind of Database. Or we
were too smart to want one or today people are too dumb to need one. I
worked in the past for a big company where there were hundreds,
literally, of Db's spread all over the organization. All from different
vendors which does not help and turn simple acts in very complex
operations and at the same time , what a contradiction, ordinary staff
and some high managers; living on a worksheet world.
I believe this is one of the main reasons to the SOHO market
shrink. Spreadsheets (mainly MS-Excel) has taken the place in SOHO
market, not saying that it's right but that's what happened. There are
so many situations that I look and say: Why in the hell are you using a
worksheet to store data? Well, the most probable answer which people
don't like to assume is: because I don't know how to use anything else!.
Excel is very intuitive and easy to use at a basic level (advanced
functions aren't so ), people just throw data there and it's done. I
became very irritated with such thing because I see it everyday.
Interesting that I found another old war horse , Dbase , that just
finishing developing a Virtual machine just to run Dbase IV and that's
curious , if it is a defunct product and with so many Windows Options
available why in the hell care about it ? I know probably that we'll be
history one day but as Juba like to say: Not Yet !
cheers...
On 22/09/2014 18:39, Don Friedman wrote:
Fabio,
Years ago some of saw a preview of a windows version of DP. Maybe
Ralph remembers that meeting, maybe someone else does. At the time the
idea was that the Windows program could "use" DP as a user but that it
would be almost impossible to create a Win version of the actual
program that 'compiled' the database, that was going to have to remain
a DOS function. My understanding is that that rudimentary demo we saw
was destroyed at some point, never to resurface.
The market for "home user" databases turned out not be substantial
enough to support products in the market. There were quite a few that
had some fine capabilities, I don't remember their names but Q&A was
one. Today I suspect that there would be even less of a market; I
strongly suspect that if there was a market there would be products
competing for a share.
I don't like to say it but I fear that the days of DP are over, we're
the leftovers struggling to hold on. Eventually we too will be history.
Don
*Don Friedman
ProfessionalRecords.Com LLC
PRS Data Systems
*
*205 S Main Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15215
412-784-1600 - 1-800-PRS-FILE
412-784-1615 Fax*
On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 4:41 PM, Fabio Muller <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hello Folks , I did some research about this topic some time ago
and I would like to share my thoughts with Patrick and you all
On 12/09/2014 01:00, Patrick Riley wrote:
Danny, a 32-bit and/or 64-bit version of DataPerfect is
anything but a
bad idea. It would
be a God send, extend DataPerfect's usefulness for the foreseeable
future and put an
end to the never ending questions and issues about running on
DataPerfect on modern
operating systems.
Windows 7, 8 and future versions (64-bit) doesn't run 16-bit
programs (DOS or Windows)anymore, thanks to WoW64 Subsystem. There
are some rare exceptions but these are embedded into WOW64.dll and
just these are accepted and were included by MS themselves, mainly
some Old installers. So, the only way to get 16-bit running on
these Windows is through virtualization. Thanks, again, Jos for
provide that for us. Obviously there are some disadvantages in
virtualization but with the processor power nowadays things are
almost the same as a dos computer and is a good way to get pretty
good things going on. 32-bit programs can run, but you have to
recompile your source with 32 bit version of the compiler, which
sometimes is not available, and make a lot of adjustments to make
it really 32 bits (check here a small preview of this:
http://www.digitalmars.com/ctg/dos32.html). Forget about 64-bit
because there is no 64-bit in MS-DOS (and never will).
> I believe DataPerfect was written in Forth. There are a
number of Forth
compilers (and
interpreters) available for x86 systems. Here's one list:
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Forth/Implementations/
> Here's another overlapping list:
http://www.forth.org/compilers.html
yes, according to the legend, DP was written in Forth and if you
know Forth you know that is a one way path, if you have the source
and you were the guy who created it, you have a chance of get the
expected results. To complicate a little bit more it seems that
Mr.Bastian used some modified version made by himself (the man is
a monster!) so doesn't expect great changes because the staff
capable of doing it is quite small.
On the surface, this would seem to be doable. The fact that
it hasn't
been may meant here's more to it. Maybe Lew could comment?>
Since Lew has made a number of new DataPerfect version
compilations, I'd
guess there
are no copyright issues.
Probably this was the Fatima's 3rd secret, Mr.Bastian is the only
one who knows exactly what the deal was. We know that he is
allowed to do a lot things but we didn't know what he can't do and
sincerely I don't care as the ball is still rolling and rolling
well. Reminding that Novell, at those times, was something bigger
than it is nowadays and just the fact that they allowed him to
make something was a hit for the user base then. In 2012, I talked
with one of their lawyers because I wanted to publish the ad video
about DP on youtube and they were very open, in fact they treat as
kind of abandonware but you know , while it doesn't mean profits,
no trouble at all.
I run DataPerfect on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional under
VMware which
works but
always creates extra work in interacting with other programs and
functions outside
of my VMware virtual environment. I'd be a _huge proponent_
of a native
32-bit version
of DataPerfect (which would run on 64-bit operating systems).
A 64-bit
version would
be even better.
Remember that DP was built to run on 16-bit,MS-DOS machines , as I
said above just to rebuilt to 32 bit would require a great effort.
If you asked my opinion and I had already said that, I would love
to have a Linux version. I know that there is a very small chance
of having such a thing because it would affect the entire
Multi-billion dollar DB industry so heavily that someone would
have to disappear from the planet in order to continue living( My
DB Consp. Theory !). Well in fact, it wouldn't affect the industry
that much but, it would bring back the home user programmer to the
DB world (It wasn't necessary to have a Bs on computer science to
build a DB in the early days). Today this niche is completely
abandoned.
I'd like to see DPorder added to your list of components. I
can only
use the current
version of DPorder with small DataPerfect projects getting a
out-of-memory error once
I reach a fairly small number of panels and/or reports. Memory
shouldn't be an issue
in a 32 or 64-bit version.
Cheers for your suggestion.
Pat Riley
505-750-4728 <tel:505-750-4728>
hummm strange, May be some VMware problem. Could try with VDOS to
see if you get the same results ? Could be just a VM config problem.
At 10:34 AM 9/11/2014, you wrote:
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="_000_613B408086EE08439B9DFC97BC58DF083B8F35E7MAIL1museumafri_"
Dear all,
Working with DataPerfect under 64-bit OS is a problem that
has to be
solved through e.g. VMPlayer.
Unfortunately, although once promised, a Windows version
of DP does
not exist.
I had the same problem with 16-bit QBasic programs, but now
recompiling them with QB64 was a straightforward solution.
I suppose DataPerfect (with its additions as DPEXP and
DPIMP, MCREATE
and STE-MGR) and Shell with the Editor [for shell-macros])
are written
in a kind of C language…
I wonder if there is no 32-bit version of the compiler for
that language…
This could be a solution for the 64-bit environment.
Of course one needs to have the correct compiler and the
source.
I know that Lew Bastian had the source code for
Dataperfect but maybe
copyrights are preventing a recompilation??
A bad idea?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Danny Meirte
curator Herpetology
Royal Museum for Central Africa <http://www.africamuseum.be/>
Department of African Biology
Leuvensesteenweg 13
3080 Tervuren, Belgium
Tel.: +32 2 769 56 29 <tel:%2B32%202%20769%2056%2029> Fax
: +32 2 769 56 42 <tel:%2B32%202%20769%2056%2042> or +32 2
767 02
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