Hi All, Yesterday, I released the new version of Logger. It has come a long way since the first Alpha release and works great. I made some final decisions on a couple aspects and it is now in the Beta stage. Other than some probable byte squeezing, there is only one other possible feature I might add before the final version 1.0 is released (see below).
https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/logger.html <https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/logger.html> Here is a summary of the major changes and final decisions I made since the Alpha-7 release: Interface can export the log as HTML in full color. Driver supports VESA mode changes. Driver supports AMIS and IISP. Driver provides the ability to check status, enable/disable logging, clear and append the log through an API. API is usable through AMIS or by direct far call to driver by other programs. Driver and Interface will be released as a single dual-mode binary. (popular request) Release includes very small and simple API examples. (For example, a 141 byte COM program with source to append the log.) Release includes UPX’d driver only version for usage on limited capacity media like boot floppies when needed. Adding AMIS, IISP and the API increased the memory resident footprint of the driver by approximately 30%. But, that is still only a total memory footprint of 1,472 bytes for the 0.1-BETA version. I think those features are worth the couple hundred bytes required for their support. There is no API documentation at present. Instead, I included simple examples that include all the different API functions. The addition of the API and inclusion of the UPX’ed driver only version makes the size of the single dual-mode binary much less important for usage on boot floppy diskettes. For example, if it were used with the FreeDOS install media, only 2.6kb would be required for the driver. If non-user visible debug messages are desired, the simple 141 byte demo “add message” program could be used. This would consume about 3kb of disk space instead of the roughly 10kb used buy the dual-mode binary. As a bonus, having a batch execute the small demo program repeatedly would be much faster than launching the bigger program to simply append the log. The API only supports the functions mentioned earlier. It does not support reading the log. I think that would be of very limited use and most likely not worth the additional cost in memory to provide those functions. However, those may be added in future versions if there is enough demand for them. The only other feature I am considering adding before the version 1.0 release is triple-mode support to the binary. Along with behaving like a device driver for loading in the CONFIG.SYS, it would be (very, very) useful to be able to simply run the binary from the command line and use the driver portion as a TSR. However, I’m tired of working on Logger and may put this feature off until version 1.1. We will see. What will not be in version 1.0 is NLS support. Other than the help, status information and a couple error messages, Logger really does not have much user facing text of itself. The primary reason for eventually adding NLS support is because of the HTML output. As most of you are aware, many DOS ASCII characters are not displayed by HTML directly. Many symbol and special characters require remapping to HTML sequences. For example, simple characters like “<“ need converted to “<”. The HTML output by logger already does this for some characters. But, many more should be added. Eventually, it will get NLS support and the capability to use alternate mappings for different languages. On a side note… Logger has seen some “real world” use over the last week. One of my DOS machines was causing another developers programs to have a couple issues. Using Logger made it very easy to record the program output and other information which I was able to easily share with the developer in order to solve the issues. This is where I really have grown to like the HTML output a lot. With the inclusion of color, they look really nice when viewed on common desktop operating systems like macOS and Linux. Oh, I also updated the Logger demo boot diskette image that can use either the LiveCD from FreeDOS 1.3 or any of the Interim Test Builds to start a Live Environment. https://fd.lod.bz/redist/system/ <https://fd.lod.bz/redist/system/> :-) Jerome
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