Hi, after hours and hours of work, my XDOSEMU (http://www.dosemu.org/ or use the more real http://dosemu.sourceforge.net/ instead) now finally understands LOADABLE FONTS (int 0x10 API - not yet via video RAM).
Check out several examples in "fontfx.zip". I can also recommend Andreas Foersters (maybe http://akfoerster.de/ ) CAPS.COM. It is kind of exepacked because Andreas wants to keep the source private (sorry Andreas for stealing your ZECHO idea for my ZECHO2 - but hey, it is only 40 lines of assembly...), but it looks cool! It creates a mixed normal / smaller Font that makes text look like written in "small caps" :-). For a simpler test, you can use my quite old CLOWN3 program which simply replaces "A" ... "H" by some fine work of art by myself :-)). I have plugged a complete font RAM system into the int 0x10 font loader (as I did not know how to store the fonts at appropriate places of the frame buffer / video RAM), and have improved the exact- ness of processing of several simulated pieces of video hardware a little bit (especially font size and font selection). Then I have replaced the X Font code by some code that uses an 1 byte / pixel local screen buffer and calculates raster graphics of the visible text, using the ROM / user fonts for everything. However, the code would need a big cleanup by an XDOSEMU expert: Lots of X Font code is left over and could be removed (not used anymore), and I was unable to use the remapper (dynamic color depth and zoom, by Steffen, I think) properly, so you cannot zoom TEXT windows with my patch, and support of strange color depths might be limited. In addition, using the remapper would be a bit faster. As a little bonus the TEXT modes (not the GRAPHICS modes, but could be added) now allow you to see the overscan (border) color. Black for most people anyway, but I love to have this in blue. It is updated in pieces, so if you change the border color over time, you should get colorful frame arts :-). If somebody understands the remapper, he should have a look at the split screen / line compare support (I have put a little hook and some comments in the code, but not written anything useful for THAT issue): This is the effect where the bottom part of your screen scrolls separately (as seen in Jazz Jackrabbit and Lemmings, and which XDOSEMU does not support yet). The generally better accuracy of text mode rendering now allows me to set up that 80x100 CGA text mode with 8x2 font that allows you to draw 160x100x16 graphics in CGA. But the clock selection and double scan parts seem to be wrong: I get an 80x400 mode instead of 80x100 ... (access to lines above 128 is blocked anyway in the code, and this is a good idea ;-) - so the lower 2/3 .. 4/4 are black) ... but otherwise fine :-). Another open issue is that MIDID does not like me: I have MIDI, but no OPL3 with a sequencer (only one without). Maybe a translation of Adlib to speaker beeps or dsp sounds would help here. Two other bugs: Hercules HGC support could be better, I think Steffen Winterfeldt had some patches, but I lost them. I am trying to run a game that wants a HGC with 64k of RAM, and neither this nor mapping 128k of VGA RAM in DOS mode is properly supported yet. The other bug is that some games like Lemmings 3d and Raptor seem to wait for some interrupt source (Adlib? DMA? DSP?) - in Lemmings 3d, I have no sound, and in Raptor the game freezes at each sound until I cheat eip with dosdebug. Whatever. I am very proud to have those, although messy, patches finally done. It took me something like 3 work days, and all that in less than 2 calendar days. I should probably work a bit on my REAL work now and take a FreeDOS break. Currently open issues: George Bell needs Undelete to handle FAT32 (2 GB partition size are enough, though) or some other tool that can undelete a whole deleted directory on a FAT32 partition. And my DOS port of DOSFSCK is waiting for some patches from the maintainer of the Linux version before I can add a disk write driver (by now, you can read/write images and read disks/partitions with the DOS version. The Linux version does not have those limits). UNDELETE should also get a combined "dirsave to user and directly spawn copies of yourself in follow mode" interactive mode, to be useable more in style of Norton UNDELETE. And if you REALLY had too much time, you could port BrlTTY to DOS, connect it to LCDproc (both Linux then), add dynamic geometry for changeable media like floppies and zip disks to LBAcache, add write pooling to it (or write a separate write pooling cache! Usually, those caches can be quite small), add Windows (> 2 GB partitions) disk I/O to UNDELETE and DOSFSCK, and solve all bugs that the DOSEMU BugTracking system on http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=457447&group_id=49784&func=browse and the FreeDOS BugTracking system on http://www.freedos.org/ (many!) have. For FreeDOS, VCPI for EMM386 (or a repair of VM386) would be cool, an UMBPCI for AMD, dir /s for FreeCOM (better as a dir.exe for now!), rename with target wildcards for FreeCOM and kernel, copy with the same feature for the kernel, more speed for SCANDISK/CHKDSK (they are important as DOSFSCK needs a 386), help with DEFRAG, help with the INSTALLER (apply via Natasha or another INSTALLER developer), help with HELP, help with the correct directory structure in our ZIPfiles, help with our CODEPAGES and NLS and maybe graphical PRINTER drivers, or do anything else that I have forgotten. As you can see, FreeDOS and DOSEMU have enough fun and work for all of us :-)). Whatever. You can find all my mixed stuff under http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/ and in particular you want to check out http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/dosemu/ with the patch :-)). The new patch includes the old periodic RTC IRQ simulation patch as well. Sorry, but it is not actually a patch which runs automatically. But you should be able to translate it into an automatic one, or patch each file separately. The download is only 28k, like 1 hour of work for each k of download... Of course, everything GPLed, although not stated (how would you add a disclaimer to a .diff file?). May my karma increase and XDOSEMU improve by it :-)). By the way, I was thinking about Wine and Win4Lin: How about a Lin4Win? You would loose lots of stability, but I think something like UML (User Mode Linux, like "linux.exe" to run in Linux) could be ported to Windows. Would be funny, kind of LinuxEmu, as counterpart for DosEmu. I recommend adjusting many drivers of Linux and not to simulate any hardware. Just a crazy idea that I had the other night, dunno if it will be useful for anything. I do not have Windows anyway (but Lemmings for Windows runs better in Wine/Linux than Lemmings for DOS does run in XDosemu/FreeDOS...). That was definitely enough chatter about M$. So here my "release notes". Have fun with the patches and please improve them further. Sorry everybody that I cross-post to the FreeDOS list, but I think because Dosemu is an important developer tool for DOS, people on this list should be interested, too. Cheers, Eric **************************************************************************** ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is my first masterpiece of the month (took me some 24 work hours, the VGA emulator is really hard to understand... sigh): Thanks to my FONT patch, you can now not only load int 0x43 fonts for graphics modes, but TEXT modes can now be completely rendered in graphics mode! You can load ROM and USER FONTs through the int 0x10 API, but not yet directly into the video RAM. However, they look just as good :-). As a side effect, you now can use tweaked modes like 80x30 text mode or 160x100 CGA "text graphics" (80x100 actually, using an 8x2 block graphics font with "left half" and "right half" and "none" and "both"...). You still cannot use split screen (line compare register, which is used in Jazz Jackrabbit and Lemmings to have a separately scrolling status bar at the bottom of the screen), and Hercules emulation still does not offer 64k. However, I hope that Steffen Winterfeldt still has the patch around which was meant to improve HGC graphics. Do not forget to check out the other patch (older, so probably better install it first) of mine, which allows the RTC periodic interrupt to be simulated. PASKA uses it for the coreography of an award-winning (www.assembly.org 1999, 4k intro category) "Matrix" effect thingy. It feels pretty cool to be the author of a "Matrix" (Dosemu) component that helps watching a "Matrix" effect :-)). Eric, 1. December 2002. Download: http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/ dos-ega/dosemu/ or somewhere close to that location :-). ---------- list options/archives/etc.: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-dev unsubscribe: send blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bz8Rv5.bbRv4l.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
