Hi Aitor... > I'm sorry, but my own opinion is NO. First of all, there are features > about MEM, AtapiCDD and why not, DISPLAY that should be finished...
I would suggest to drop ATAPICDD from that list. > But worst of all, the large number of bugs already existing. I doubt > that naming it 1.0 would encourage users to patch the 42 existing kernel > bugs. This might be strongly correlated to people losing interest in a project which does not even reach version 1.0 after eleven years... My idea would be that if we start calling things 1.0-preview (as in "beta 9 release candidate" some people will wake up and check those 42 bugs again - and probably find that half of them already ARE fixed but nobody had tested since kernel 2024. > MS-DOS 6.22 had a decent disk scanning tool, we lack ScanDisk, for example. Our original goal was to start with MS DOS 3.3x compatibility. If you look at MS's versioning scheme, version 1.0 did not even support directories. Calling FreeDOS a pre-1.0 beta implies that we did not even manage to reach DOS 3.3 functionality. Only insiders know that we hesitate because our goals have grown to, say, cloning MS DOS 7. Given the freeze in most aspects of FreeDOS development I would say it is not good to always raise the goals without sometimes sitting back and being proud of what we reached so far AND settling and debugging that state. Instead of getting a certain level stable (e.g. check if we really have ALL DOS 3.3 tools working well) we just add wishes and refrain from updating. Remember that Blair did start his distro because he noticed that our newest ISO image was ONE year old and the newest COMPLETE (not only base category) ISO image was YEARS old. Actually still people use beta 8 (wow!) because that is the newest official complete FreeDOS distro until we give the great comprehensive Blair FreeDOS distro a more charming name. It feels far better than a "release candidate for beta 10". To me it feels more a preview of version 1.0 (not the 1.0 itself, as some things are still on the wishlist). > I think it'd be a very good point ahead MS-DOS to have own CD driver FreeDOS - never reached version 1.0 but surpassed MS DOS 8 long ago, historicians could write ;-). Excuse my cynism, but a CD driver is nice but no standard part of what you get when you buy MS DOS. So if we find some resources to put into ATAPICDD, cool, if not, that would not stop FreeDOS from ever reaching 1.0 either. > KEYB: very close, a couple more of versions, same for DISPLAY. I would suggest PC-XT compatibilty going first. I assume MS DOS was at a version number far above 1.0 before it supported Japanese and MS DOS did not even ever have a layout librarian at all... > PRINT: no-one is working on that Big reason for that is that no-one is using it either today. As can happen with the whole of FreeDOS. Especially companies which might use FreeDOS for something or bundle it with computers need the insider knowledge that FreeDOS BETA is actually BETTER than MS DOS 4, otherwise they would not dare to use FreeDOS at all because it is beta. > MEM: who was working on that? progress? This is described in the 1.0 TODO wiki, but I have not heard back about the recent progress for quite a while. There should be some MEM 1.8, but I do not know where you can get "1.7-and-a-half" now. > Please, do NOT mix NLS things with string translation. NLS support > (date/time, numeric, etc) is marked as mandatory, string translation isn't. Right... But see above: We need testers, otherwise we never know where NLS support is missing. Most people who use FreeDOS at all just use it in English mode, I guess. Or maybe there is no feed- back because all except number layout (1.000,00 versus 1,000.00) already do meet NLS requirements?? > I don't think it's a good idea to make developers again be > tired of the same 1.0 stuff... I think most developers REtired because they think their work is finished and nothing is left to do for 1.0 - so we are in a dilemma about reaching 1.0, speed lowers as we approach 1.0 :-(. Eric ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
