Picking up on this thread, which is of continuing interest, at least to me!
I said originally that I was looking for suggestions/opinions regarding freeware or open source DOS GUI interfaces. That I was familiar with still-developing OpenGEM, but was especially interested in any GUI's that provide for long names for program items -- like MS-DOS DOSSHELL but with a more modern look. OpenGEM has no such provision. (Note that DOSSHELL modestly provides for long group and program item names without supporting long file names. It simply maintains an INI file with its long program and group names.) I was also interested in your judgment of any GUI's file manager, stability and resource consumption. I said that task switching is nice, especially if stable, but that this was a secondary concern for me. ------------------------- It turns out that there are interesting half-a-loaf or partial solutions. My first thought had been about full desktops with a program manager, file manager and command shell/programming environment. Here I start with MS DOSSHELL. Then we have OpenGEM, but it does not yet support long group/program names (not to speak of long file names). I have also read a bit about Desktop 2 and SEAL (and the SWORD library). These look hot, especially SEAL, but they are said to be buggy and/or no longer under development. Flo Xaver of this list is working on oZone, which is promising but still in initial development. In all cases, as one reviewer noted, full GUI desktops have set themselves a difficult task because they design to offer a programming environment, so to succeed *fully* they require application developer support. (Though I would be happy right now with just a program + file manager of the right description.) But there is software out there now that attempts less but does it pretty well. Developers have crafted free-standing program managers (aka menu programs or menu executors, some graphical) and file managers that are capable and modern-looking. I mentioned the Access program manager in a recent post about screenshots, but wanted to return to it just to share my thoughts about it as a program manager. The author is Ronald Blankendaal, and his site is at http://surf.to/AccessDosMenu. My positive feedback: I was looking for a more modern looking program manager than MS DOSSHELL, but one that supports long group and program names as DOSSHELL does. Access is just what I wanted there. It has proportional fonts, color schemes, a library of color icons, and supports Windows .ico icons. Memory usage drops to zilch while it is executing programs. It seems to be quite stable. Suggestions and issues: - I would like it if I could create sub-groups (nested program groups). This is something that DOSSHELL does nicely. - It would also be nice if I could adjust the screen resolution. DOSSHELL allows me a number of choices there, which gives me the flexibility to squeeze everything onto one screen if I want to, rather than scrolling down to see more items. - I would prefer it if Access returned to the group-and-item position from which it launched a program. Currently it resets to the first group and item upon return. - There is an integrated CD Player, and the program seems designed to display a button if it finds a CD-ROM drive installed, but on one test machine with a SCSI CD-ROM, it displayed the button but was not capable of supporting the drive. The previous version of the SETUP program allowed the user the choice to install the CD Player or not, but the current version does not, so I was stuck with a CD Player that was offered but did not work. - In one case, I was not able to remove a program item. Rather, the item was removed temporarily, but upon re-starting Access it reappeared. Repeated attempts to remove the item failed. If this had been DOSSHELL, I could have manually edited the text file DOSSHELL.INI and gotten what I wanted, but Access's configuration files seem to be binary. ** Despite those points, I regard Access as a winnner. I use it now instead of the DOSSHELL program manager. Thank you, Mr. Blankendaal! Next up: Anyone know of a nice two-pane Explorer-like graphical file manager? There is OpenGEM of course, but I like Del, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V more than drag-and-drop. GEM has keyboard shortcuts for file selection, but requires drag-and-drop for copying or deleting. --John Hupp Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
