Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

2012-01-11 Thread Florian Xaver

 
 I don't think that SEAL (regardless under which name and incarnation, 
 there were several IIRC) ever got to the point that it was in any 
 form usable. Can't call this promising at all. All they got was 
 some nice desktop picture, nothing more...

You are wrong. There weren't many useful programs, BUT it provides most widgets 
and a Desktop! So if somebody had been started writing a GUI program, this 
would have been the first choice. But I think, this GUI were 5 years too late…

Now there seems to be problems compiling the whole framework. 

Bye
 Flo
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Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

2012-01-11 Thread Florian Xaver

El 11.01.2012, a las 03:38, Ralf A. Quint escribió:

 I'd love to have you contribute to a GUI project. There have been
 several. The one with the longest history is OpenGEM, but the web site
 is now idle (http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/). The OpenGEM6 pre-release is
 the last we heard of this project, in 2006
 (http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/gui/opengem/6/).


I wouldn't contribute to this GUI. The framework has no modern features, were 
very nice years back. But now…

I would only contribute to GUIs, which are ports from Linux or at least are 
using libraries for the GNU C/C++ compiler.

 Florian
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[Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

2012-01-11 Thread Michael Robinson
The problems encountered strapping a GUI onto a DOS system are similar
to the problems that were encountered when object orientation and
classes were added to C to create C++.  C++ is really a hybrid language,
neither a strictly procedural nor a strictly object oriented language.

Any GUI strapped onto a DOS environment will seemingly make it a hybrid.

All dos environments share the following problem:

Multiple users requires permissions on individual files and resources to
keep users from walking all over each other, if such a thing is wanted.
DOS environments only have a superuser.  So, DOS environments are single
user environments. Change DOS so that there are permissions on files,
FAT filesystems present a real problem since they predate permissions on
files.  Many programs that expect uninhibited access to everything and
anything won't work.  The best you can do is run Linux or something even
more secure underneath DOS via DOSBox.  Each user has his/her own DOS
system.

Nowadays with companies greedily protecting their intellectual property,
can you access hardware directly if you don't know what's there?  Can
you use a software library to access that hardware via a well known
interface from your favorite OS?  Does it ever make sense these days to
have direct hardware access without the user abstraction?

If DOS itself is in ROM and you are building a kiosk...  maybe then if
you can directly access the hardware DOS does make sense.  Even a GUI on
a DOS kiosk might make sense.  What doesn't make sense is a DOS system
that is supposed to be usable by multiple strangers where the system is
not in a ROM but on a writable hard disk.  Insofar as a graphical user
interface can limit what can be done and make it easier to do what is
intended, such an interface will make sense.  So a version of DOS with
no command line per se outfitted with a GUI could make a nice kiosk
system.  But if direct hardware access is improbable or software library
access of hardware is impossible outside of say Windows 7, you are in
trouble even if the target system is a Linux system.


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Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

2012-01-11 Thread nospam

I find it tedious to download lots and lots of files from the DJGPP site and 
putting them into the DJGPP directory. In the process you have to make sure 
that old packages do not overwrite the files installed by new packages. And 
you may have selected the wrong version needed or just missed some files. 
Therefore I made a ZIP archive of my DJGPP directory which I know works with 
Nano-X and FLTK. So you may use that or try the one you already have. I did 
not modify or recompile any DJGPP code for this.

If you want to develop with Nano-X you just need the binary version. There 
is also the source code which allows you to recompile Nano-X. Both versions 
contain user guides and examples.

Georg


 Looks like a better option, specially because is a current project and
 is free.
 I see the download lists and I dont undersand what is that we must to
 download.

 http://code.google.com/p/nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos/downloads/list

 Is needed to download their djgpp package in order the run the
 calculator and other examples?

 -- 
 --
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 Marco A. Achury
 Tel: +58-(212)-6158777
 Cel: +58-(414)-3142282
 Skype: marcoachury
 http://www.achury.com.ve




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Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

2012-01-11 Thread Florian Xaver
Since DJGPP is not up-to-date anymore a fresh installation is a pain! (new 
versions of the libraries, small fixes, etc, new versions of the compilers ...)

Bye
 Florian


El 11.01.2012, a las 12:27, nospam escribió:

 
 I find it tedious to download lots and lots of files from the DJGPP site and 
 putting them into the DJGPP directory. In the process you have to make sure 
 that old packages do not overwrite the files installed by new packages. And 
 you may have selected the wrong version needed or just missed some files. 
 Therefore I made a ZIP archive of my DJGPP directory which I know works with 
 Nano-X and FLTK. So you may use that or try the one you already have. I did 
 not modify or recompile any DJGPP code for this.
 
 If you want to develop with Nano-X you just need the binary version. There 
 is also the source code which allows you to recompile Nano-X. Both versions 
 contain user guides and examples.
 
 Georg
 
 
 Looks like a better option, specially because is a current project and
 is free.
 I see the download lists and I dont undersand what is that we must to
 download.
 
 http://code.google.com/p/nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos/downloads/list
 
 Is needed to download their djgpp package in order the run the
 calculator and other examples?
 
 -- 
 --
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 Marco A. Achury
 Tel: +58-(212)-6158777
 Cel: +58-(414)-3142282
 Skype: marcoachury
 http://www.achury.com.ve
 
 
 
 
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 costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
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 https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


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Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

2012-01-11 Thread jhall

 Do you have any info what happened to Shane/the OpenGEM project, the 
 whole disappearance happened a bit quick and starring for several 
 years now at the site that proclaims Something exciting is coming 
 soon is a bit of a drag :-( ...
 
 Ralf 
 

IIRC, he became the IT Director or CIO for an organization somewhere in Europe. 
He said he always meant to go back to finish up the OpenGEM 6 prerelease, make 
a full release, but I guess he never had the opportunity with his new 
responsibilities. So the web site got stuck as-is.

jh
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

2012-01-11 Thread dmccunney
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 5:36 AM, Michael Robinson
plu...@robinson-west.com wrote:
 The problems encountered strapping a GUI onto a DOS system are similar
 to the problems that were encountered when object orientation and
 classes were added to C to create C++.  C++ is really a hybrid language,
 neither a strictly procedural nor a strictly object oriented language.

 Any GUI strapped onto a DOS environment will seemingly make it a hybrid.

Please recall that DesqView, DesqViewX, GEM, and Windows through 9.X
were precisely GUIs strapped onto a DOS environment.  (Win98 used DOS
as a real-mode loader, and once it was up, DOS was out of the loop and
Windows *was* the OS.)  DesqView and Windows even provided
multitasking.  They did their own time slicing, and served as
dispatcher, serializing access to the underlying OS functions.

 All dos environments share the following problem:

 Multiple users requires permissions on individual files and resources to
 keep users from walking all over each other, if such a thing is wanted.
 DOS environments only have a superuser.  So, DOS environments are single
 user environments. Change DOS so that there are permissions on files,
 FAT filesystems present a real problem since they predate permissions on
 files.  Many programs that expect uninhibited access to everything and
 anything won't work.  The best you can do is run Linux or something even
 more secure underneath DOS via DOSBox.  Each user has his/her own DOS
 system.

If you *have* multiple users, you *don't* have a DOS system.  it is
explicitly single-user, and presumes the user at the machine is the
administrator.

Windows kept that model through XP, and only made substantial changes
in Vista/Win7.

Part of the problem is the file system.  FAT provides no place to
store the required permissions data.  Windows didn't really get it
till NTFS.

 Nowadays with companies greedily protecting their intellectual property,
 can you access hardware directly if you don't know what's there?  Can

If you *have* a multi user, multitasking OS, you don't *want* to
address the hardware directly.  The process attempting to do it
*cannot* assume it's the only thing running, which was the case under
DOS.

And in the DOS days, addressing the hardware directly was for
performance reasons.  The usual direct address was the screen, and the
usual reason to do it was something like a game where BIOS updates
would be too slow.

 you use a software library to access that hardware via a well known
 interface from your favorite OS?  Does it ever make sense these days to
 have direct hardware access without the user abstraction?

Yes, for the reasons mentioned above.  It depends on how you implement
a DOS system.  If you have something like FreeDOS installed so you can
boot directly into it, a virtual machine solution like DOSBox under
Linux isn't in the picture.  You *can* directly address the hardware,
and your programs may try to.

The challenge placed by things like DOSEmu is that the class of
programs they were designed to support (games) *did* try to address
the hardware, and DOSEmu needs to make the program think it *has*,
even though something else is actually handling things.

 If DOS itself is in ROM and you are building a kiosk...  maybe then if
 you can directly access the hardware DOS does make sense.  Even a GUI on
 a DOS kiosk might make sense.  What doesn't make sense is a DOS system
 that is supposed to be usable by multiple strangers where the system is
 not in a ROM but on a writable hard disk.  Insofar as a graphical user
 interface can limit what can be done and make it easier to do what is
 intended, such an interface will make sense.  So a version of DOS with
 no command line per se outfitted with a GUI could make a nice kiosk
 system.  But if direct hardware access is improbable or software library
 access of hardware is impossible outside of say Windows 7, you are in
 trouble even if the target system is a Linux system.

Why are you assuming said DOS system will be accessed by multiple
strangers?  For things like FreeDOS, there will be a single user who
installs it in the first place and runs it after it is.  While it's
theoretically possible to set up DOS in a VM so that different users
have different DOS systems, t's far more bother than it's worth.

If I am setting up a kiosk, DOS is *not* what I'll use.

There are three issues being conflated above: multiple users,
multitasking, and GUIs.  They are separate issues, and for a DOS
system, the first doesn't even need to be considered.  It won't be
used that way, and even if it is, it will be the same way DOS systems
were used back before GUIs came on the scene: one user at a time.  You
won't have the issue of more than one person/process trying to update
the same filesystem at the same time and stepping on each other's
toes.

What is being discussed here is the last: a GUI.  There are reasons a
GUI may be desireable, and I'd be delighted to see a supported
solution 

Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

2012-01-11 Thread Ralf A. Quint
At 12:30 AM 1/11/2012, Florian Xaver wrote:

El 11.01.2012, a las 03:38, Ralf A. Quint escribió:

  I'd love to have you contribute to a GUI project. There have been
  several. The one with the longest history is OpenGEM, but the web site
  is now idle (http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/). The OpenGEM6 pre-release is
  the last we heard of this project, in 2006
  (http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/gui/opengem/6/).


I wouldn't contribute to this GUI. The framework 
has no modern features, were very nice years back. But now…

What modern features would that be?


I would only contribute to GUIs, which are ports 
from Linux or at least are using libraries for the GNU C/C++ compiler.
Why encumber yourself on DOS with a behemoth of a Unix/Linux compiler?

Nothing personal Florian, but this all seems to 
be exactly one of those cases where people are 
just trying to force DOS into a second coming of Linux...

Ralf


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

2012-01-11 Thread Ralf A. Quint
At 07:39 AM 1/11/2012, dmccunney wrote:
Please recall that DesqView, DesqViewX, GEM, and Windows through 9.X
were precisely GUIs strapped onto a DOS environment.

Just for the record, DesqView is not a GUI, but a text mode 
multi-tasking/task-switching add-on for DOS and basically an 
extension to Quarterdesk's QEMM memory manager.

And the name GUI means Graphical User Interface. Basically handling 
common tasks by more visual means rather than having to use/type 
various and possibly long command line instructions.

What people nowadays seem to expect that they get all the new fluff 
of newer developments in operating systems instead of sticking with 
the original meaning of the term as far as the use of GUI in 
relation to (Free)DOS goes...

Ralf 


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

2012-01-11 Thread dmccunney
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote:
 At 07:39 AM 1/11/2012, dmccunney wrote:
Please recall that DesqView, DesqViewX, GEM, and Windows through 9.X
were precisely GUIs strapped onto a DOS environment.

 Just for the record, DesqView is not a GUI, but a text mode
 multi-tasking/task-switching add-on for DOS and basically an
 extension to Quarterdesk's QEMM memory manager.

DesqView/X was a GUI, but point taken.  They were all shells on top of
DOS.  (I ran DesqView, back in the day.  It worked surprisingly well.
I recall one BBS sysop running four instances of a Wildcat BBS on a
25mhz AT under DV.  He could have 4 nodes connected to four modems and
operating simultaneously on on machine.

 And the name GUI means Graphical User Interface. Basically handling
 common tasks by more visual means rather than having to use/type
 various and possibly long command line instructions.

Yes, but I don't see why such a thing shouldn't exist for DOS.  GUIs
took over the world for a reason.

 What people nowadays seem to expect that they get all the new fluff
 of newer developments in operating systems instead of sticking with
 the original meaning of the term as far as the use of GUI in
 relation to (Free)DOS goes...

Well, not if they are trying to use DOS, they don't.  (If they do,
they get disabused of the notion very quickly.)

 Ralf
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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox FreeDOS HowTo

2012-01-11 Thread Bernd Blaauw
Op 11-1-2012 0:58, Ulrich Hansen schreef:
 I have started a VirtualBox HowTo in our FreeDOS wiki.
 It is a sort of installation walkthrough with many pictures.

 It can be found here:

 http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Installing_FreeDOS_in_VirtualBox

That looks great, you've done an awesome job at posting such a detailed 
guide. I'm so happy I kept things simple for now so not that many issues 
will arise.

The more complex binary test release is something which I'll integrate 
in a next FreeDOS 1.2 release. Some issues were found there, some fixing 
is needed. Most likely TDSK related.

Thanks for your guide, I hope Jim will link it from the download page.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

2012-01-11 Thread Ralf A. Quint
At 09:20 AM 1/11/2012, dmccunney wrote:
I ran DesqView, back in the day.  It worked surprisingly well.
I recall one BBS sysop running four instances of a Wildcat BBS on a
25mhz AT under DV.  He could have 4 nodes connected to four modems and
operating simultaneously on on machine.

It did indeed, we used it at a former employer, a CAD/CAM software 
company, to run compiler servers...

  And the name GUI means Graphical User Interface. Basically handling
  common tasks by more visual means rather than having to use/type
  various and possibly long command line instructions.

Yes, but I don't see why such a thing shouldn't exist for DOS.  GUIs
took over the world for a reason.

I don't say that a GUI for DOS in general is a bad thing,...

And it is not that GUI's took over the world, but nowadays every 
mouse jockey insists on using GUI based operating systems.
And there is far more to any Windows, Mac OS X, Linux these days than 
just running a GUI on top of a command line based OS.
And IMHO it just doesn't make sense to back port all that additional 
fluff, as you easily reach the limits of the underlying DOS in terms 
of available resources. And a lot of efforts that people are 
making/trying to make in order to push those limits or eliminate them 
just lead to changing (Free)DOS into another Linux distro.

Ralf 


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

2012-01-11 Thread Michael Robinson
A kiosk is a multiple user system, but not necessarily a
simultaneously multiple user system.  So DOS will work most likely.
Chances are though, the DOS system files and tools themselves need to be
on read only memory if there is any possibility of a person being at a
command line and making a mistake or doing something malicious.  DOS
used in a kiosk breaks down if there is any persistent data tied to a
particular person that needs to be saved on the kiosk, but often that
isn't what you actually want.  A large ROM and a lot of ram placing data
on a ram drive is an option.  Hit the reset button, the data is gone.
Freedos in particular boots up quickly, so users can hit the reset
button and the next person will be able to use the system shortly.
Dos is simple compared to Linux, less to go wrong and troubleshoot.
Dos supports some software that no other environment supports.
Dos with local only area networking on a kiosk may be connected 
to a true multiuser multitasking OS so that individual user data 
can be saved securely.  A kiosk in essence should be just a terminal 
to a more advanced server.  The advantage of a true single user fast
booting OS is that you can hit the reset button and you won't damage
it.  Don't hit the reset button on a Linux system, it may not boot
again.

 Why are you assuming said DOS system will be accessed by multiple
 strangers?  For things like FreeDOS, there will be a single user who
 installs it in the first place and runs it after it is.  While it's
 theoretically possible to set up DOS in a VM so that different users
 have different DOS systems, t's far more bother than it's worth.
 
 If I am setting up a kiosk, DOS is *not* what I'll use.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

2012-01-11 Thread dmccunney
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Michael Robinson
plu...@robinson-west.com wrote:

 Why are you assuming said DOS system will be accessed by multiple
 strangers?  For things like FreeDOS, there will be a single user who
 installs it in the first place and runs it after it is.  While it's
 theoretically possible to set up DOS in a VM so that different users
 have different DOS systems, t's far more bother than it's worth.

 If I am setting up a kiosk, DOS is *not* what I'll use.

    A kiosk is a multiple user system, but not necessarily a
 simultaneously multiple user system.  So DOS will work most likely.
 Chances are though, the DOS system files and tools themselves need to be
 on read only memory if there is any possibility of a person being at a
 command line and making a mistake or doing something malicious.  DOS

DR-DOS came about because Digital Research got requests from OEMs for
a ROMmable version of DOS for embedded applications.  You couldn't do
it with MS-DOS because it wasn't architected to allow the necessary
separation of code and data.  (Microsoft did eventually address that.)

 used in a kiosk breaks down if there is any persistent data tied to a
 particular person that needs to be saved on the kiosk, but often that
 isn't what you actually want.  A large ROM and a lot of ram placing data
 on a ram drive is an option.  Hit the reset button, the data is gone.
 Freedos in particular boots up quickly, so users can hit the reset
 button and the next person will be able to use the system shortly.
 Dos is simple compared to Linux, less to go wrong and troubleshoot.
 Dos supports some software that no other environment supports.
 Dos with local only area networking on a kiosk may be connected
 to a true multiuser multitasking OS so that individual user data
 can be saved securely.  A kiosk in essence should be just a terminal
 to a more advanced server.

 The advantage of a true single user fast booting OS is that you can hit
 the reset button and you won't damage it.

It's hard to damage most current OSes that way.  I used to have a
specialized telecommunications server in a computer room at one
employer that ran OS/2 Warp, on an HFS file system.  Have a problem
with it?  Power cycle.  It came back up fine *every* time, with the
problem that made me power cycle it gone.

I know if they still do, but the kiosks that print Amrak tickets at
Penn Station in NYC used to run OS/2.

 Don't hit the reset button on a Linux system, it may not boot again.

Haven't used Linux in a while?  That has *not* been my experience.  I
have *never* had a Linux system fail to boot after a reset.  I *have*
had *Unix* systems that needed file system *repair* after a reset or a
power outage, but current Linux filesystems are a lot more robust than
early Unix file systems were, and often journaling, so that resorting
to things like fsck is not required.  All the information to
successfully restore the last state is present and applied during the
boot process.

And file systems like Ext4 under Linux and NTFS under Windows are
*far* more robust than DOS FAT.  I've had problems under Windows that
required running CHKDSK.  Under DOS, that would result in a slew of
FILE.CHK files that might or might not be something salvageable,
and a system that would require fairly massive repair to make
operational once the file system was sane.  Under Linux, I've never
even needed to do fsck, and under Windows, CHKDSK matter of factly
corrected the file system, and put all the orphaned files back in the
proper directories under their correct names.  The only time it failed
to do so was when directory information happened to be on a bad block
and couldn't be recovered.  The *files* could, and recreating the
correct directory for them to live in was trivial.

If I have to set up a kiosk, I want a robust filesystem that survives
power outages and resets.  That's *not* FAT.  Boot time is *far* less
important than being robust when up and running, doing whatever the
kiosk does.  *That's* not DOS.

I repeat, if I need to set up a kiosk, DOS is *not* what I'll use.
__
Dennis

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