Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Steve Nickolas <lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org> wrote: > On Tue, 26 Jul 2011, Rugxulo wrote: >> >> On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Joe Cosentino <hardmar...@comcast.net> >> wrote: >>> >>> It's included in MS-DOS 6.22, it'll be included in FreeDOS. >> >> That's not a good metric since, as mentioned, FreeDOS doesn't include >> other things (link, qbasic, dosshell -> wlink, bwbasic, doszip ?), at >> least not in "BASE". (Besides, apparently MS-DOS 5 is last to have it >> by default without optional add-ons.) > > MS-DOS 6.0 has DOSSHELL in base. (PC DOS never lost it; even the last > retail version still has the option to install it off the base install > disks.
You mean 2000 (aka, 7 w/ fixes)? Or "IBM server scripting toolkit"? But no, my point was I don't think even 6.22 had it anymore, only in Supp (or Stepup or whatever, can't remember), for some odd reason. > On the other hand, it dropped BASIC, BASICA and QBASIC after 5.02, As you know, IBM and MS had a "falling out" around 1991. IBM allegedly still had full sources to MS-DOS 5 and Win 3.0, though, but they probably had to pay royalties on distributing them. So at least that's my guess at why they removed it (and/or because they also had REXX and E [editor] available, which came with PC-DOS 7, IIRC.) > and while LINK remained in MS-DOS until 4.01, its last appearance in PC DOS > is all the way back in 3.20.) I don't understand the reasoning behind that. Why not include it? Why make it harder to find? Maybe they had the idea that "nobody uses it" or "it's buggy or limited" or "compilers have their own anyways". Most likely, and obviously I'm not in total disagreement here. Because while I think LINK is much more useful than EXE2BIN, even that can't be used by itself, you need a compiler (e.g. Oberon/M). BTW, as mentioned, latest (16-bit OMF) LINK is still (!) available on MS' FTP (though it requires 386 host due to PharLap extender), but it's basically just meant as an upgrade for MS VC 1.52 users. So I don't think it's true "freeware". (Then again, if they didn't want anybody else using it, why the hell is it on public FTP? But that alone isn't enough justification. Still some people these days [not me] still link [sic] to their download.) > I may suggest that since anything that really could use a linker comes with > one, and exe2bin functionality is in most of them as well, having one in > FreeDOS is redundant anymore. > > IBM actually dropped EXE2BIN the first time after 3.2 - 3.3 and 4.0 do not > have it, but it came back with the DOS 5 reunification, to go away again > with DOS 7. (I just did some analysis of DOS versions all the way back to > 1.0x and all the way up to 7.0, to make sure my information here is > correct!) 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?). > Other commands which were dropped by the 6.22 era, or at least relegated to > a separate download/purchase, were ASSIGN (MS-DOS 6), BACKUP (MS-DOS 6 and > PC-DOS 6, although MS-DOS 6.21 - but not 6.22, again - has it in base and PC > DOS 7 also has it in base), JOIN (MS-DOS 6), MIRROR (made redundant with > updates to FORMAT in DOS 6?), MSHERC (only used by QBASIC, QuickBasic and > Visual Basic anyway), PRINTER.SYS (MS-DOS 6 and PC-DOS 7) and RECOVER > (MS-DOS 6 and PC DOS 7). 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. 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.) 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), but perhaps some of us think DEBUG already covers all that. "If it can't be done in DEBUG, it's can't be done at all." ;-) But seriously, we're not going to win a lot of fans telling them "use DEBUG", so we should consider including Guenther's 16-bit AWK compile (though a newer version apparently came out two months ago, need to e-mail him!!). Okay, this thread got too long, feel free to ignore, I'm just posting some random ideas in case anybody finds it useful. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
