Beiträge von hanslse

Hi Thomas,

Well, I mostly agree with you regarding FreeDOS, I have dealt with FreeDOS kernels, since way back. I am sure Jim Hall is doing a great job. However, I have found the memory management a bit of a concern as Geos is dependent of as much free base memory as possible. For example, internet operations are memory hungry. I guess much of it are still undocumented, ie corporate secrets, and open source developers (read Freedos) have to observe, mimic and sometimes guess how the memory management works, when developing drivers. I find it a bit odd that Microsoft still keeps the source of DOS 5 and later on, software they stopped develop twenty years ago. Especially when it is hard to find new hardware to run it on.

Very good idea, but as I remember MS-DOS 4 was a terrible version of MS-DOS, with a decreasing amount of free base memory, I think at least MS-DOS 5 could be used, but it is still closed source. It should be possible to build an base system using FreeDOS, but FreeDOS have problems with memory management, and it feels a bit shakey. Mostly PC/Geos works okey in FreeDOS, but when the base memory is used fully and extensively, the base memory often gets full and PC/Geos crashes. It is also intended to use PC/Geos as a windowing system on top of FreeDOS, I think that it is not a good idea to use FreeDOS for this purpose.

Some years ago, I made a FreeDOS boot disk for PC/Geos, just with the basic boot files one needed to make PC/Geos (Breadbox Ensemble) to run. One of my observations during that time was that PC/Geos was very vulnerable to how the kernel file worked together with the memory management. PC/Geos could crash instantly by changing version of the kernel file and memory management, just keeping the same settings in the config.sys and autoexec files. Something I have not experienced in MS-DOS, DR-DOS or PC-DOS. Apparently, there was changes made that was not "standard". What the changes was, I have no idea. Different DOS:es have their problems, like for example DR-DOS (official release), lacks native support of FAT32. The implemented driver sucks, as it decreases the amount of base memory. PC-DOS 7 from IBM is a very good DOS for Geos, except there is a lack of FAT32 support. MS-DOS 7.1x, is a good DOS for Geos, but not distributed distributed since many years, and hard to get unless you have a valid license of Windows 98 SE. There are also tech problems with W98SE as you need a floppy drive to be able to create a boot disk.

No, I have not tried MS-DOS. I have found a difference in how the last 4.13 version from Breadbox works compared to one of the latest versions of PC/Geos in the FreeDOS project works. I do see your point. The memory management in Freedos seems to be a bit buggy. I guess you refer to MS-DOS 7.10 from W98 second edition. I can give it a try.

I think to deal with the internet browsing and its problems in Geos can wait to be dealt with. There are far more important things like to fix like the truetype driver, and the German translations, for example. My prevoius post was.more to point to the need to optimize the memory use, on the other hand, the problems regarding browsing might even be due to bugs or memory leaks in the drivers related to the internet stuff, but we will find out later on.

Zitat von Achim

Moin zusammen.

Der Achim hat erst mal fertig! Ich habe Nico die letzten deutschen Hilfedateien für Dateisuche und Outliner geschickt, damit er sie nach github hochlädt. Was jetzt noch bleibt sind die Hilfen für Instant Messenger, File Transfer und News Reader. Für diese brauche ich in Geos eine funktionierende Internetverbindung. Ich würde gerne Thomas' Pi/GEOS verwenden, aber irgendwie funzt es noch nicht.... Toll wäre, wenn Andreas mit einem internetfähigen PC/GEOS auf DOSEmu2 um die Ecke käme. Nun, schaun mer mal...

I dont know if this is relevant, but I have tested to browse the internet with the latest incarnation of FreeGeos. I am using FreeDOS, no emulator. I have configured FreeDOS with a packet driver and using EtherPKT in Geos. It goes fine to start the browser and load the start page of Breadbox with the Bluewaysw logo, but when I then want to load the Geos Infobase page, I get an out of memory message after a while. This did not happen in the Breadbox Ensemble 4.13. Of course, I could also get out of memory in BBX, but not in this way. Could it be the true type driver causing also this problem?

I need to claify, I use FreeDOS on "bare metal" as it is called, when you run the operating system on a computer. There is no emulator or DOSBox involved. I guess most people here run it in a DOSBox, and that my way to use PC/Geos is less common today. I think the problem with the os2.geo fs driver might be the mapping of the drives as some people have pointed out. I guess the only way to track this is to have a PC with FreeDOS. But, it might be that the ntfat driver is the right one for FreeDOS, and the os2 driver should be as is?

Interesting explanation, Jörg, thanks!

Seems to be an issue under FreeDOS, too. I know there are also bugs or "differences" in how FreeDOS works. I am thinking of the memory management in FreeDOS, but there might also be other issues? The stacks command needs, for example, to be set at stacks=0,0 in fdconfig.sys, to make the bundled Geozip work without crashing. I also had a weird resolution issue in 1366x768, which was solved by setting stacks to 0,0. Falk could not explain the problem at the meeting, I attended. However, I have also found that this issuse was solved in the jemmex driver bundled with the sound blaster emulation for the AC97 sound cards published in github. My guess is that the stacks command interfered with upper memory reserved for the graphic card in the laptop.So, there are probably bugs in memory management in FreeDOS, but I also suspect that hardware manufacturers like Lenovo take their freedom regarding configuring the hardware and BIOS, versus how IBM set the PC standards, in this case the management of upper memory, which gives problems running PC/GEOS on bare metal in my Lenovo laptop. The configuration of FreeDOS needs to be very precise, in a manner I have not seen prevoiusly. I can bring the laptop to the meeting if I will be able to attend.

Have a nice late evening or night!

Prevoiusly, in the old "Breadbox days" I used ntfat.geo as the fs driver, as I found ths os2.geo driver not to be as good as the ntfat, however, I have used the os2.geo until now, as I have switched back to ntfat.geo. ms4.geo can only be used in drives up to 2 Gb, or 2047 Mb, or in emulations like DOSBox.

The reason for me to switch back to ntfat.geo is that it works with Gonzo ( os2.geo makes Gonzo crash). This might depend in that I run Geos in FreeDOS on "bare metal", no emulation. And my hardware configuration with SSD drive and Intel Celeron laptop might also be an issue?

I think I might have found the problem? It seems to be some kind of issue with the os2.geo fs-driver? When I switch to ntfat.geo Gonzo works and is not crashing anymore, but I have to set both the lines fs = ntfat.geo and primaryfsd = ntfat.geo in geos ini to make it stop crashing.

Gonzo still crashes for me, sometimes with KR-07 and sometimes with KR-09. I unzipped the latest ensemble, released 10 hours ago, just out of the box. The only changes I made was to switch the video driver from 800x600 to 1366x768. Gonzo crashes during the setup of the program. I use the 1.2 English version of Gonzo. Any hints?

Well, Tetris is copyrighted, but there is Columns, and also Same for PC/Geos. I think it should be possible to evolve them or create something new. Check out Block Blast for Android. Quite similar to Tetris?

Zitat von msgeo

Implementing all GeoDraw functions in GeoWrite would make the writing program too cumbersome; it would then look like MS Word. But it is nice to be able to edit small graphics embedded in a text.

Sure, I was just doing some referencing, it means that I was not advocating the move. It sounds reasonable to be able to edit graphics in GeoWrite.

Zitat von msgeo

Bis zur Version NDO2000 konnte Geo-/NewWrite Bitmaps bearbeiten.

If I recall correctly, this was Steve Main's idea, to integrate the functions in GeoDraw into GeoWrite and maybe ditch GeoDraw?

Gosh, Konstantin, you ask about things 20 years ago! I remember that Gene wrote a new E-mail peogram, called E-mail, the NDO e-mail programs was ditched. Gene also made updates to NDO GUI, free to download and install. I also recall that Frank at Breadbox complained about changes made to the code during GlobalPC/NDO era which contained bugs which affected the Terminal program among other things. Something also happened to the parallel port handling. This lead for Breadbox to take a step back codewise, to older version pre the changes. Hopefully, others can fill in?

Zitat von Jirka Kunze

Hallo Achim,

jetzt habe ich es verstanden.

Der Font Viewer ist ein Werkzeug mit welchem Fonts betrachtet werden können ohne diese installieren zu müssen. Da dazu die 'innere' Struktur des Fonts dem Viewer bekannt sein muss geht das nur mit den Nimbus Fonts. Ich habe den Font Viewer nicht im github Repository gefunden. Daher kann ich keine Aussage machen wie aufwändig es ist diesen für TTF Fonts fit zu machen.

Die Groß-/Kleinschreibung sollte unter DOS eigentlich keine Rolle spielen. Meine erste Vermutung wäre das hier der Host (wenn ich mich richtig erinnere verwendest du DosEmu) eine gewichtige Rolle spielt.

Jirka

FontViewer was created by Gene Anderson, and published as Careware. Careware in Gene's version is/was to send a contribution to an animal shelter for homeless domestic animals, like for example cats.

It would be great if a Geos programmer could write a similar software, or update Gene's software, with Gene's permission, of course. I think Gene is not interested in participate in FreeGeos ☹️

It is the graphic in the last words screen saver

Zitat von MeyerK

Kinners,

nachdem meine minimalistische Neu-Interpretation des Backdoor Man ungefähr so beliebt war wie eine neue Eissorte "Labskaus", habe ich mich der Funktion noch mal gewidmet und hoffe es entspricht jetzt mehr Euren Vorstellungen. Ihr findet es im aktuellen Build...

Swedish ice cream company "Sia-glass" made an ice cream tasting like the chevre cheese

I think Frank at Breadbox had some contact with Marc Sinsoillier regarding a French version. It was in a very early stages just touching the issue. However, a new language version is a teamwork, and not a one man show. So this was put on hold, as I remember.

I see no harm in contacting them?

Maybe we should not use the logo in the system files? I think the present "executable" standard icon is good enough.

Regarding spell checking, is it possible to use the glossary and thesarus that libreoffice uses? If it is too much work, we could leave it for the future, as a future project, and be happy with the current Haugthon-Mifflin thing, as long as it covers basic English and German languages, and it is not too archaic?

As a sidenote, I have been asked a couple of times when visiting the Geos meeting, if I don't want a Swedish version of Geos, but I can only say that the English verson works fine for me as long as I can set the Swedish settings like keyboard, date and time, and so on. I have even added the Swedish glossary and thesaurus from MS Office, which was compatible with Ensemble, as it was in the same file format.