Re: [Freedos-user] DOS and PDFs (Was Re: Update wiki info on installing ftp on a virualbox guest?

2023-03-24 Thread Hollowone PL
There is Acrobat Reader 1.0 for MSDOS but it does not support modern PDF
format. I'm sure it has evolved so much that none of the current PDFs work
with it anyway.
It's available though on winworldpc for download and check.

If that doesn't work then I assume porting some open source to DOS is the
only option to get legitimate MS DOS support for the format with this or
that rendering option (VESA/SVGA based I assume)

-h1

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 5:14 PM Michael Brutman 
wrote:

> I think it is pretty safe to assume that everybody using FreeDOS in the
> last 10 to 20 years has access to another, more capable device that can
> read PDFs.  Even low end cell phones have had this capability for the past
> 5 years.
>
> I started with pure TXT files, composed on the same DOS machine that I did
> my coding and testing on.  But even in 2013 those files were adding up to
> more than 210K across 16 files.  Just like I migrated from using a hardware
> 80386 to a cross compiler for the code in 2011, I migrated the documented
> for PDF in 2015.  The PDF format lets me do far better formatting and
> screen shots, which are useful for clear documentation.
>
> As cool as it would be to have everything self contained and self hosted
> within DOS, that's not our reality.  I think it's more important to use the
> appropriate tools for the job, PDF is very good for documentation - just
> not on DOS.  Given that everybody probably has access to something that can
> read PDFs, there is not much of a reason to downgrade carefully written and
> formatted documentation.
>
> I am concerned about these kinds of things because I do put a lot of
> energy into ensuring my work is properly packaged.  It's probably possible
> to export the PDF has HTML, but again I'd want to do that myself to ensure
> the formatting stays reasonable.  (And even then, the generated HTML is not
> going to be usable on the 16 bit machines with CGA that I target.)
>
>
> -Mike
>
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[Freedos-user] DOS and PDFs (Was Re: Update wiki info on installing ftp on a virualbox guest?

2023-03-16 Thread Michael Brutman
I think it is pretty safe to assume that everybody using FreeDOS in the
last 10 to 20 years has access to another, more capable device that can
read PDFs.  Even low end cell phones have had this capability for the past
5 years.

I started with pure TXT files, composed on the same DOS machine that I did
my coding and testing on.  But even in 2013 those files were adding up to
more than 210K across 16 files.  Just like I migrated from using a hardware
80386 to a cross compiler for the code in 2011, I migrated the documented
for PDF in 2015.  The PDF format lets me do far better formatting and
screen shots, which are useful for clear documentation.

As cool as it would be to have everything self contained and self hosted
within DOS, that's not our reality.  I think it's more important to use the
appropriate tools for the job, PDF is very good for documentation - just
not on DOS.  Given that everybody probably has access to something that can
read PDFs, there is not much of a reason to downgrade carefully written and
formatted documentation.

I am concerned about these kinds of things because I do put a lot of energy
into ensuring my work is properly packaged.  It's probably possible to
export the PDF has HTML, but again I'd want to do that myself to ensure the
formatting stays reasonable.  (And even then, the generated HTML is not
going to be usable on the 16 bit machines with CGA that I target.)


-Mike
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