Re: [Freedos-devel] Packages on the FreeDOS distribution

[Fritz Mueller via Freedos-devel]

You are right. It is on the bonus CD - and from there it works. Could it be that other tools also do not work perfect via fdnpkg?

format 0.92a is too new for testing.

 

 

Sent: Monday, September 23, 2024 at 2:36 PM
From: "Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel" <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
To: "Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers." <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
Cc: "Jerome Shidel" <jer...@shidel.net>
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Packages on the FreeDOS distribution

 

Hi Willi,

 

I’m not at my computer right now. Just want to provide you with some notes/additional information.

 

 

On Sep 23, 2024, at 8:09 AM, Fritz Mueller via Freedos-devel <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
 



Hi Jim,

The following tools are superfluous:

a) FDTUI: have a look at it and you will agree (I proposed it several times)
b) ClamAV FreeDOS Antivirus: It needs more than 128 MB to work, command line is very complex for users, virus definitions are very big and absolutely out of date. The UI "fdavx" makes it simpler to handle but it is not delivered with FDT2409 and cannot be downloaded via fdnpkg.
c) suppls (not part of the CD) has a size of 1,135,490 Bytes, according to fdnpkg it installs only the following files:
appinfo\suppls.tr, suppls.sv, suppls.lsm, suppls.fr, suppls.de to C:\FreeDOS\appinfo.
Nothing else. Could you remove it or enable the download of the library?

 

 

If I recall correctly, most of SUPPLS was under sources. Therefore, if the package is installed without (install sources) you only get some metadata. But, that was changed 4 months ago. It now places its files under DEVEL. However, I don’t think the version on the package download repository (ie using FDNPKG) was changed.

 

 

Adding files:

Could you add vbdados as already asked on the CD? Like vmsmount it makes it easier for VirtualBox users to move files in / out of the vm.

One more thing: Please do not create so many package groups! And if you do so, try to add a path to the commands.

Whenever a command cannot be executed, I have to look: "Where is this d... command" and run through all folders or open
dz and run a search. One of the problems of fdnpkg is that it says if it is installed or not, but not in which folder.

And if you move commands like amb etc. there, it will not work automatically.

 

If you install pkgtools, you get pkginfo. It can list installed packages, tell you what binaries were installed with a package, detect missing files, identify what files belong to what package and a bunch of stuff like that.

 

 

Do we really need to have both AMBHELP and HTMLHELP on the LiveCD?

I personally prefer htmlhelp ONLY. There are several reasons:

 

a) file size of help files:

          htmlhelp:                                   amb:
 
german    529.548 (ver 1.0.8)                  973 kB (ver 1.0.8)
english   685.021 (ver 1.1.0)              882.363 B  (ver 1.0.8)
French    523.123 (ver 1.0.8)                  974 kB (ver 1.0.8)
spanish   543.500 (ver 1.0.8)                1.029 kB (ver 1.0.8)

Please keep in mind that ver 1.1.0 has more than 100 additional commands!
htmlhelp uses the zip format to keep help small.

 

b) htmlhelp has three different colour schemes: Simply use /F1 or /F2 or standard.
   amb has only ONE colour scheme.

 

c) htmlhelp has an advanced search function, you can find everything,  even "<" when you search for "&lt;" etc.

 

d) htmlhelp has a size of 55.818 Bytes, amb 9.726 Bytes (less features)

 

e) htmlhelp allows tags (not in use for space reasons), amb does not.

 

f) htmlhelp: right scrollbar works easy, amb: works hard

 

g) htmlhelp: you can jump from one command to another with arrow up/down/left/right and TAB
amb: aro up/down/left/right works, but it does not jump automatically to the next command.
Meaning: when there is a space, you have to click several times till you reach the next
command.

h) htmlhelp supports a simple to write htm file whereas you need a tool to compile to amb format. Mateusz told me that he is no longer willing to compile it for me. The simple htm file is easy to write in another language.

i) htmlhelp supports UTF-8 now. This makes it easy to write the help with modern editors.

(most latin codepages are supported now)

j) htmlhelp is no longer unstable (thanks to Bernd Böckmann)

 

So please stay at htmlhelp!

 

Willi

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2024 at 10:41 PM
From: "Jim Hall via Freedos-devel" <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
To: "Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers." <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
Cc: "Jim Hall" <jh...@freedos.org>
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Packages on the FreeDOS distribution

On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 3:06 PM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel
<freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> Just a couple minor differences…
>
> util/v8power needs to be installed with base. Many things (like cd
> & networking initialization, batch file NLS and more) rely on tools
> provided in v8power.
>
> util/pkgtools probably should be included with full install. It displays
> information on what packages are installed and can identify what package
> different installed files belong to. It also contains the tools used
> by a couple batch files to provide such information that used to be
> provided by a few long out-dated legacy programs.

What if we created a new "package group" that contained Zip, Unzip,
V8Power, and Pkgtools, and included that on the LiveCD? We could call
it something like "Installer" or "Pack" or some other name that makes
sense for this collection of key packages to support the installer. If
we do that, it would also make sense to move FDIMPLES from the "Apps"
group to this new group, just to keep things organized.


> util/slowdown should probably be installed with full. It is often
> needed to run very old games on newer hardware.

Agreed. Would it make more sense to move it to a new package group
that's already recommended for LiveCD? It's not really a game, but
Games seems like a "not-bad" fit, since most people will use this to
run old games on fast hardware (or fast virtual machines).


> apps/sqlite I think it is rarely used and should be moved to the BonusCD

Since Sqlite is "An Embeddable SQL Database Engine" (from the package
description) maybe this would be better for Devel, anyway. That puts
it on the BonusCD and keeps things organized.


> archiver/p7zip possibly LiveCD/Full install.

I can see the reason for that, because p7zip supports a lot of file
formats. But I'd really like to avoid the temptation to put more stuff
on the LiveCD if we don't need to. I'm thinking about the kinds of
files that people will actually need to use on DOS, and basically any
program they download from a third party website (like a DOS games
archive website, or an "abandonware" website, or ..) TO RUN ON DOS
will be a zip file (not a tar file, or cab file, or ..) so I'm not
100% convinced p7zip needs to be in the LiveCD.

My vote is to keep p7zip on BonusCD. Do others have strong opinions on this?


> Do we really need to have both AMBHELP and HTMLHELP on the LiveCD?
>
> util/ambread is required for ambhelp.
>

I'd like to get to one Help system. We included AMB Help and HTML Help
as a sort of compromise, but at some point we should go for one over
the other. I think it's okay to have both for the next few test
releases, but we should try to reach consensus by the end of 2024.

Speaking for myself: I really like AMB Help, I think it looks really
nice, feels more modern, and is easy to use. I prefer AMB Help over
HTML Help, although HTML Help is "fine." I guess my preference is
"60/40." But others may have stronger opinions.

If we keep AMB Help on the LiveCD, we might move AMB Read to the Apps
group, which puts it on LiveCD. Then it makes sense that AMB Read is
installed by default, at the same time as AMB Help, even though AMB
Read is not part of the Base group.


Jim


_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel

_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel

_______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel

_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel