As I understand there are two different requests 1- Substitute for the GUI win9x environment. This is made better by reactos and wine
2- Sustitute for DOS-Mode Win9x to run some programs not compatibles with current FreeDOS. This is more feasible. This included support for undocumented ms-dos features. 2009/6/11, Eric Auer <[email protected]>: > > Hi guys, > >> I agree here. A new GUI should not run exclusively on FreeDOS... >> I think asking the FreeDOS (kernel) developers to provide technical >> information about DOS, while not tying the program to FreeDOS... > > I would recommend to program your GUI in a way which makes in run > on any DOS, using exclusively normal int 21 calls for which you > can easily get documentation by reading a MSDOS book or website. > >> Speaking of a Windows replacement, it could be handy to use some of the >> Windows (3.x) support already embedded into MS-DOS... > > Windows 3, in 386enh mode, uses some relatively documented things > to hide task swapping or even multitasking from the kernel(?), as > a DOS kernel does not support reentrancy. I assume you could also > write some sort of wrapper which just makes sure that int 21 calls > by different tasks cannot happen at the same time, making life a > lot easier for DOS. Of course that would reduce performance a bit. > > WfW 3.11 goes the other direction by using more knowledge about > more badly documented internal details of the kernel to squeeze > out more performance, I guess. Which forces DOS versions who > want to be compatible to behave as if their inner working would > be very similar to MS DOS. > > Your GUI could also abstract all DOS access from the graphical > apps. Then your apps only talk to your GUI and the GUI talks to > DOS, taking care that DOS only has to deal with one client, the > GUI itself. Should be elegant :-). > > If you want to run Windows programs in a free way, try the HX > extender from Japheth or of course try ReactOS or Wine in Linux. > It really takes much effort to find a PC which is too old for > Wine and a lightweight Linux version, which makes the whole idea > of writing yet another (this time standalone) Windows emulator > somewhat less useful ;-). > > Eric > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial > Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited > royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing > server and web deployment. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > -- -- +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Marco A. Achury Tel: +58-(212)-6158777 Cel: +58-(414)-3142282 Fax: +58-(212)-2410828 Skype: marcoachury www.geocities.com/marcoachury ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing server and web deployment. http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
