Mail Archives: opendos/2000/01/11/12:39:07

In the last century, Joseph Morris wrote:
> > I for myself have (almost) ready many system extensions 
> > for (DR-)DOS, which I would like to polish for 
> > publishing once DR-DOS would have become really open...
> 
> What do you have in mind?
Very brief only, as it would fill pages to go into details:
Any DOS environment:
- FreeKEYB 7 (for FreeDOS, DR-DOS and any other DOS), Axel's 
 and mine much enhanced international keyboard driver with 
 multi-monitor screen saver, extended keyboard buffer, 4DOS
 KSTACK emulation, Copy cursor for copy/paste between multiple
 screen pages and applications, macro support, calculator,
 easy access to greek and scientific symbols, apo/accent/umlaut
 translation and literally hundereds of other smart enhancements
 making life easier at the prompt.
 Self-loadhighable (even on XTs) at a memory footprint of
 ca. 9 Kb with all the features included.
 Next version still under development (for many years now since 
 good old K3PLUS times), but we'll be reaching release state soon... 
 ;-) 
 
- Updated utilities and revised MPDOSTIPs (the issues on my web 
 page are quite dated).
Related to DR-DOS, although independently developed by me (it depends
on Caldera/Lineo if this may happen to become part of Lineo's next
DR-DOS box, like many of the 7.02/7.03 enhancements were):
- Much enhanced COMMAND.COM shell more compatible with 4DOS, Win9x and 
 NT CMD, plus a number of features for better coexistance in an
 Unix (Linux) environment.
- (Once more) enhanced NLS system (client/server model that even 
 works with remote resources) with support for up to 50 codepages 
 simultanously (including all codepages supported by Eastern 
 European DOSes, OS/2, NT, 98, Linux, Mac, ISO, etc.) and more, 
 support for multiple COUNTRY.SYS files at the same time, even 
 DR-DOS and MS-DOS files mixed.
 Support for Hebrew and Arabian extras. User definable 
 extensions. User definable country data overriding system data, 
 making it easy to have a context-sensitive NLS system depending 
 on user, application, working directory, etc. Multi-lingual 
 message server for external message files. Support for all DR DOS 
 issues downto 5.0. All this at virtually no extra memory 
 footprint thanks to the new NLSFUNC 4.xx technology I wrote
 back in 1997 (NLSFUNC 4.00 is already part of DR-DOS 7.03). 
- Much enhanced and fixed FDISK utility. 
- Much enhanced external utilities, like DISKCOPY (including 
 better disk image support), DISKCOMP, FORMAT, SYS, GRAPHICS, 
 DOSKEY, GRAFTABL, KEYB, and many more. 
- Alot of kernel fixes and enhancements.
- Some memory manager/task manager enhancements and fixes.
- More "intelligent" and flexible boot loader/method.
- Enhanced CDROM support.
- LBA support.
- (Unicode support on DR-DOS, e.g. for Java and Internet applications -
 still a research project only, but based on the new NLSFUNC 
 mentioned above.) 
- More...
However, at present all these enhancements either require to some 
extend the original DR-DOS sources or only make sense in a DR-DOS 
environment due to its enhanced features. Some will not run on MS-DOS 
or FreeDOS as long as they don't support enhanced DR-DOS APIs.
Matthias
 
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Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
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