Hi Mateusz, >>> Very true. The help needs a LOT of work so it has some cool content and >>> provide at least some basic directions to users that are not familiar >>> with DOS. >> >> How do you define "cool content"? > > Anything that's useful to beginners I guess... Part of the problem is
Then we have to ask some beginners. :-) > that for me everything is obvious, so even if I had time to spare on > documentation, I wouldn't really know what to start with. Same here. >> I'm *not* talking about GUIs like, e.g., ozone or GEM, but a tiny >> program for navigating directories, viewing text files, and executing >> programs. >> MS-DOS version 5 had DOS Shell. Even version 6 had it, although it was >> on the supplemental disk. > > Makes sense. If there's one that is tiny, 8086-compatible, easy to > translate, and free (libre) - then why not. I imagine it like some > micro-clone of Norton Commander, with very very limited features. But is > there such thing at all? About the two you mentioned: So, we agree here. > DOSZIP - under 100K, not bad, but no translations and being written in > assembly it might be challenging to add translation support... Um, yes. > Explorerfree - refuses to run if no LFN support is loaded. and it :-( > appears to be graphical anyway, which is not good as it won't run on an MDA. Then avoid it. In general, "graphical" means slow(er) in DOS and with more compatibility problems. > Now that I think about it - 8 years ago I had started a project named > "mvlink", I wanted to create a LapLink clone but abandoned the idea. The > TUI code works and makes it possible to browse directories. It all > compiles into a 22K binary. Code is here: Nice size. > https://sourceforge.net/p/mvlink/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/ > > and here's how it looks like: > https://imgpile.com/i/wcQ5XX Except the color scheme it looks good. ;-) > With minor adjustments it should be possible to use it to launch > applications (and run edit to view text files). It's ANSI C, so > translations are easy to add. That's would be primitive, but maybe > enough for the occasional newbie that needs "anything" just to look around? Yes, I think that would be enough. Can the second panel be disabled as it might confuse newbies? > All I'd need to do is cut out the stub of dysfunctional networking code, > link with a translation library, add a launcher to run applications and > rename the whole thing so it becomes part of SvarDOS. Sounds easy. :-D Cheers, Robert -- +++ BTTR Software +++ Home page: https://www.bttr-software.de/ DOS ain't dead: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/ _______________________________________________ Svardos-users mailing list Svardos-users@lists.osdn.me https://lists.osdn.me/mailman/listinfo/svardos-users
