Re: [Freedos-devel] Updating the FreeDOS website

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello,

> Jim Hall via Freedos-devel 
> şunları yazdı (11 Ara 2023 18:32):
> 
> The last time we made a major update to the FreeDOS website was maybe
> ten years or so. Things are definitely feeling a bit dated, such as
> certain design elements. And over time, we've added content where it
> seemed to "fit" so the usability has degraded since the last update.
> 
> I have been "backburner" planning a website upgrade for the last two
> years, and sponsored several rounds of usability tests against
> different website designs. And I think I'm finally ready with the new
> FreeDOS website:
> 
> https://test.freedos.org/
> 
> This is a preview to the new website on our "test.freedos.org"
> website. I'll move this to the "freedos.org" primary website soon.
> 
> What do you think?

Looks pretty decent. Maybe the colour scheme might use a bit more
of a vibrant setting, but other than that, it does the job.

Tested it under links too, displays pretty straightforward as well.

Thanks for the effort!

Best regards,
Emir (ఽ఺఍)

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Google Summer of Code?

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello,

It is a good idea to apply to GSoC; but I reckon there won’t be many students 
to select it. It sounds like giving a toddler a broom to clean an attic, while 
the rest of the family is chilling downstairs.

- There is no single code base, everything is scattered. Scary.
- There is no product roadmap, and no worthy possible tasks.
- Bug fixes hardly warrant a GSoC task.

> Mouse-driven GUI is always at the top of the list for new DOS
> developers, right next to "64-bit FreeDOS" and "Raspberry Pi FreeDOS."
> You know, all the things DOS wasn't made to do. :-P

Why not make a fully modern operating system with DOS conventions, and keep the 
old DOS interface as a compatibility mode, and still a separate download for 
those who wish it? Mega65 does something similar. DOS stopped being a moving 
target 30 years ago.

Even the idea “modern OS with DOS conventions” is a very challenging idea  
generator. Just target QEMU and/or a specific board that is available for a 
couple of bucks, and let people play with it. Even the hardware support may 
pick up later on (e. g. SerenityOS). Then there will be lots of ideas and 
opportunities for students to play around.

Best regards,
Emir (ఽ఺఍)

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Thinking about FreeDOS 2.0

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello all,

My ideal FreeDOS 2.0 would be something like this below. There might be some 
points that I’m not quite versed in, so bear with me.

I would like the FreeDOS 2.0 release to make FreeDOS a single-repo, and 
coherent operating system with a unified design language and development 
guidelines.

1. Release Scheme

As a user, I do not want to choose from many installation options. At most, I 
would like to see only 2+1:

- FreeDOS boot floppy
- FreeDOS
- An image of extra utilities and games

There should be no distinction between a USB and a CD image. There should be 
only one raw image that works everywhere.

2. Package Curation

FreeDOS, by default, should offer a set of images, that are carefully curated, 
and gives the next best experience when compared to a GUI-less Linux/BSD 
installation, and should make it even better. Utilities should not be 
duplicated by feature, this would equal bloat.

A minimal base system (other than the boot floppy) is simply unenthusiastic, 
and would do little to help advance FreeDOS; it will just keep it stagnating. 
If we want the DOS environment to thrive again, the system should be intuitive 
and helpful as possible.

3. Development Repository

Upon selecting the packages above, move all those packages into a single 
FreeDOS development repository, and give every maintainer commit rights. This 
will be a great step to gather a development team, and make the development 
effort coherent, say, like Haiku. Some other nice steps to take:

- Enforce a coding style
- Improve NLS (this one already did a lot, thanks Jerome)
- Create a HIG
- Enable CI tasks, and create a new image after each commit

4. Fast Updates

For machines with network access, it should be possible to update the system 
more frequently. Let’s not make it a rolling release, but rather make it 
possible to update without having to reinstall FreeDOS.

It goes without saying, but new package installs should be easy and intuitive 
as well.

5. Feature Requests

This would be my wishlist for FreeDOS 2.0:

- Unicode support
- Vertical and RTL text with complex scripts support
- Nicer fonts with appropriate coverage for those above
- UEFI support
- Some sort of compatibility layer to enable reusing drivers from other 
operating systems, maybe one of BSD’s (this one should be the priority IMO)
- Wi-Fi support

6. Development Environment

FreeDOS setup should offer installing development packages and 
utilities. FreeDOS should strive to make DOS development on DOS viable, without 
having to resort to other OSs to compile and build stuff. We could start making 
a list of what is missing compared to other systems, and open tickets for those.

There should be built-in tutorials, and example source code to help 
interested folks start FreeDOS development inside FreeDOS. Maybe a framework, 
something like FDKit? How does it sound?

***

I guess this would be my ideal FreeDOS 2.0.


Best regards,
Emir (ఽ఺఍)

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Almost there with the updated FreeDOS website

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello Jim,

Glad to see a website redesign. Just some comments at first glance:

- “Download FreeDOS” and “FreeDOS on YouTube” buttons would work better 
aligned, maybe a nice command prompt screenshot would help? Currently looks a 
bit empty with the whitespace on top and bottom. Also a screenshot is kind of 
necessary for showcasing an operating system.
- "What you need” part takes too much space, it would be nice to have it a bit 
more compact. Again, buttons on the right look too lonely.
- The website typeface looks a bit outdated (too 2003). Maybe using Helvetica, 
and then falling back to Arial and Liberation Sans for Windows and Linux 
systems respectively would look better? There are better typefaces but I’d 
rather not increase the page load with web fonts. This is subjective though, 
just my personal preference.
- An automatic dark mode would be a nice perk.
- Putting “Bugs” to main page does not communicate well. “Development” would be 
better, since I see that it links to Gitlab. Bug report information can still 
be added.
- Renaming “Forums” as “Community” would express itself better.

In addition to above, just something that I thought of right now…

While we’re at it, you might want to consider registering the #freedos channel 
on Libera IRC server, and advertising it on the website. For the next phase, 
bridging this channel with XMPP and Matrix (and maybe Discord since it’s too 
popular) would definitely enlarge the community and help new development power 
come into being.

Best regards,
Emir (ఽ఺఍)

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Installer NLS Questions

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello Jerome,

> Boot to standard US English Codepage.

Changed the codepage to 437, verified with broken Turkish display characters.

> Then run them through the conversion program (mkvV8Font). You will see that 
> some characters in the normal codepage are aligned differently. You will want 
> to tell it to include those in the new font as well (Press Y). If you tell 
> the program to try auto mode, I don’t recall if it will auto-accept different 
> alignment. It’s been a while since I through that program together.

Run the CP857.FNT font file through the program (just gave the file name as 
argument), manually approved all characters with “y”, it told me that it saved 
all the characters. I see that there is a file named .V8F is saved, renamed it 
to CP857.V8F.

On another note, all characters baseline seemed to be the same.

> Once, you created the V8F file. While still Using the English codepage, load 
> it using vfont and just set LANG=TR. The run"PKGINFO /d /p” to output a bunch 
> of text and verify it looks correct. 

It says: “Invalid font file format”.

Did I do something wrong?

Best regards,
Emir (ఽ఺఍)

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Installer NLS Questions

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello Jerome,

> Let me know if you run into any problems or have any questions.

I’ve tested the Turkish characters file with imgedit. As far as I can see, the 
glyph ascenders and descenders for Turkish-specific characters are in-line with 
the other standard characters. Is there something that I’m missing?

Thanks in advance.
Emir

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Installer NLS Questions

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello Jerome,

> 2 янв. 2022 г., в 23:32, Jerome Shidel  написал(а):
> 
> Hi Emir,
> 
> Since I haven’t got around to making a doc for creating the V8F font files, 
> here is the easiest way…

> Anyhow, it’s not hard to do. :-)
> 
> Let me know if you run into any problems or have any questions.

I will be able to test and report back in a few days.

Thank you for the detailed instructions.

Best,
Emir 


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Re: [Freedos-devel] mkey keyboard

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello,

If I understand this right, this is about moving the Turkish layouts from KEYB2 
to the main driver, right? Would this cause any compatibility issues with other 
programs?

Anyway, I will be happy to provide any assistance needed whilst testing the F 
layout.

Best,
Emir

Отправлено с iPhone

> 3 янв. 2022 г., в 19:26, thraex  написал(а):
> 
> 
> 
> On 3.01.2022 17:18, tom ehlert wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>>> But I still think about adding turkish layouts in mkeyb.
>> why? obviously thraex has had a turkish keyboard driver
>> for the last 30 years. what is the problem ou are trying to solve?
>> 
>> and thraex hasn't complained himself, so it's not up to you to
>> complain.
> 
> I must say I mainly use the French AZERTY keyboard when it comes to
> typing in English and French, and the Turkish Q layout when typing in
> Turkish. I'm much faster with AZERTY, so I seldom use the Turkish Q
> layout (with FreeDOS, only for testing and translating purposes).
> 
>>> It would make much things easier.
>> what kind of things exactly?
>> 
>> a) there are 2 kinds of turkish keyboards. which one do you mean?
> 
> There's the Q layout, derived from the American QWERTY used by the huge
> majority of Turkish people, and the F layout optimized for typing
> efficiently and quickly. I think he means both, but I'll let him answer.
> 
>> b) I wouldn't even qualify to verify if the keyboard driver works
>> correct.
>> 
>> you will have to find a turkish speaking/understanding person with at
>> least moderate technical skills to do this.
> 
> I think Emir on this list uses the F layout, I use the Q one. There's
> Ercan, the author or Minibox and FDTUI too, I don't know which one he
> prefers. They certainly both are way more skilled than me, but maybe
> with some hand holding I could see if the drivers work correctly for the
> Q layout. Hopefully it will be feasible to find people to test the
> drivers for both layouts on this list.
> 
>> after thinking about this, this project doesn't interest me; however I
>> would help to implement this.
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> 
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[Freedos-devel] Fwd: Critical FCOM Error

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello,

> Your welcome.
> 
> If your on an Intel based Mac, I recommend using VirtualBox. It’s free, 
> fairly easy to use and works well enough. 
> 
> Although, if you scale the display to something other than %100, it can be 
> sluggish. But, that probably has a lot to do with the model of Mac and it’s 
> video card.

VirtualBox is convenient, but I don’t like the fact that it puts all its 
tentacles all around the system. QEMU is more compact. :)

In the meantime, I’ve observed a critical omission in the Turkish FreeCOM 
translations; the prompt reply keys were never translated. I was surprised to 
see that I could not get out of the drive letter error, only to see that it was 
not there.

I have fixed this, and improved some other error messages in this[1] commit.

Can we please put this in a last minute FreeCOM release? It will be a real 
bummer to ship it with this error. I am really sorry that I notice this now 
this late.

Best regards,
Emir

[1] 
https://github.com/shidel/fd-nls/pull/84/commits/c8ac0ed6fff0d1da0cd062944da9d86602f21143

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Installer NLS Questions

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello again,

> While the installer (FDI) is not fast, the main issue is your whole VM is 
> really slow. I could even see the initial boot menu drawing each line. I 
> think most of the “slowness” your experiencing is video related. You really 
> want to enable some sort of acceleration. Jim has shared his invocation of 
> QEMU a couple times. I think the command line may be longer than "War and 
> Piece". 

Thanks for the link! Some of the commands seem deprecated or removed, but I’ll 
try to research on this, and being on macOS, KVM acceleration is not present I 
believe. But, thanks.

> I need to make a doc file on “how to make those v8f files”.

I do draw vector fonts, and I believe I can make some nicer bitmap ones as 
well. Please let me know once you are ready to publish info, I’ll have a look.

> I didn’t see any failure messages in the video. 
> 
> But, if you mean just in general… There are only two. One for normal mode and 
> one for advanced mode. 
> See the section starting at line 113 in the english version. 
> https://github.com/shidel/fd-nls/blob/6fe293d50feeb938de3bd8c8c700a53740f2d652/fdi/language/en/FDSETUP.DEF#L113
>  
> 
Thanks, I’ve realised that some failure messages (a couple of lines below would 
not fit properly. Modified as needed.

> First, the installer files can not be in UTF format. 
> 
> Also, Do not modify and submit updated versions of the files on the install 
> media. Most files of the installer files on the install media undergo a 
> little or a lot of modification by the release build environment (RBE). 
> Consider those files compiled executables. Changes need to be made at the 
> source level. 

Understood.

> If I understand what you are asking….
> 
> There are two separate systems in the installer regarding keyboard settings. 
> The first is the Main selection screen. The installer attempts to pre-select 
> the one matching the users language. The number of keyboard selections 
> matches the number of languages the installer itself supports. 
> 
> The second system is slower but allows any number of additional keyboard 
> choices. 
> 
> When looking at the keyboard sources, the distinction is a little clearer. 
> 
> If the installer was an EXE, it would use only one system for selecting 
> keyboards. However being batch based, breaking it into two pieces yields 
> better performance and overall works better.

No, what I meant was purely semantics. For instance, for Brazilian Portuguese, 
it just says Brazil. The same for Denmark, instead of Danish. For French, there 
is a French, and there is French (alternative). I presume one is the AZERTY 
layout, but I am not sure which, that sort of thing. I can just go ahead and 
fix for Turkish, but the others will stand out.

> Although there are translations for FDI-x86, no means is provided at present 
> to automatically change languages. It will be added eventually. But, it is a 
> low priority for me. In the meantime, it can be done manually. 

Ah, okay then. Fair enough.

Best,
Emir

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[Freedos-devel] Installer NLS Questions

[Emir SARI via Freedos-devel]

Hello everyone,

I have been making the final tests for the installer in Turkish, and have some 
questions below.

Also, the installation process seems to be pretty slow on QEMU. I have used 
qemu-system-i386 -m 32m -drive file=drivec.img,media=disk,format=raw -drive 
file=FD13LIVE.iso,media=cdrom -boot order=d command. Any suggestions for 
improving the speed are welcome.

I am also attaching the videos of my installation[1]. I understand that letters 
with accents and diacritics might shift a little bit, but the Turkish letter ı 
also seems to shift. It would be nice to improve this a bit. There is also a 
small visual glitch before changing the installer language into Turkish (see 
the video).

I will send a patch once I have improved the needed areas.

Whilst checking, I have noticed that I am not sure about how all the failure 
messages are handled, I could not find the frame width for it. I guess they are 
displayed full screen. If so, please ignore.

There is another issue with the keyboard layout name definition files. I would 
like to make some corrections, like some countries are defined by their names 
instead of the language name (e. g. Brazil, Holland, Denmark etc.). Also some 
layouts are not clear, like which French is the AZERTY one? I want to proceed 
with the changes but I am not sure how to handle the encoding. I can modify 
them to UTF-8, and make corrections in all languages, would that be okay? I 
think we can change all languages before the release. I can proofread Turkish 
and Russian and send a public patch for everyone to see after changing the 
languages.

Also, it was a while ago, but I was also able to start the Jerome’s new 
installer in Turkish. How to start that and from where? I would like to test 
that one as well.

I would appreciate any help (especially Jerome and thraex) :). I see that 
thraex already made some corrections (thank you!).

Once the issues are resolved, I will send a patch.

Happy new year to everyone!
Best regards,
Emir

[1] 
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/4aa0a35db5a58a794c82a588448bb11f20211231093146/527256527e415ca82339a3073feea36820211231093235/4b975c


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