Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
Mateusz Viste wrote: On 27/01/2020 19:02, Jim Hall wrote: I think a better option to create an ebook reader for DOS is to build one. My thought is most ebooks (at least EPUB) are just zip files that contain a predetermined structure; Yes, ePub files are just zip files with a bunch of xml metadata and some html/css formatting. But that's not the point - Calibre is not an ebook reader in the first place, it's a huge converting / cataloging / sanitizing beast. As for reading ebooks on FreeDOS, the only sane way I am aware of today is to convert ePub files to raw txt (for ex. using Calibre). But why would anyone want to read ebooks on DOS anyway? These things are best read on a paper-like screen, ie. not something a PC can offer. Back in the day i wrote a script to convert ePub files to proper local HTML. This made them more easily read in web browsers. For most of my testing i used the links browser, which works in DOS. The main advantage of this approach is that it displays the illustrations. -Ben ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
On 27/01/2020 19:02, Jim Hall wrote: I think a better option to create an ebook reader for DOS is to build one. My thought is most ebooks (at least EPUB) are just zip files that contain a predetermined structure; Yes, ePub files are just zip files with a bunch of xml metadata and some html/css formatting. But that's not the point - Calibre is not an ebook reader in the first place, it's a huge converting / cataloging / sanitizing beast. As for reading ebooks on FreeDOS, the only sane way I am aware of today is to convert ePub files to raw txt (for ex. using Calibre). But why would anyone want to read ebooks on DOS anyway? These things are best read on a paper-like screen, ie. not something a PC can offer. Mateusz ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
On Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 12:48 PM Roderick Klein wrote: >[..] > While a lot of of OS/2 API's look like DOS API names, that is whre the > simularities end... > > In terms of memory management its not like Windows 9x/ME. Its a true > protected mode OS with its own network NDIS stack, graphical subsystem, > multimedia sub system (MMOS/2). > > Porting QT from DOS to OS/2 is not something that will help as DOS is > lacking a lot of these features. >[..] Agreed. QT has a lot of dependencies that I don't see possible on DOS (FreeDOS or MS-DOS). I think a better option to create an ebook reader for DOS is to build one. My thought is most ebooks (at least EPUB) are just zip files that contain a predetermined structure; the book text is just HTML. So you could (in theory) modify a program like Dillo or Links to open the zip files and display the HTML files. Better features would include bookmarking (so you can pick up again later where you left off). I had this discussion with Karen a while back but I guess I had the wrong idea? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
On 26-01-20 17:27, Eric Auer wrote: Hi Roderick, I am the chairman of the Dutch OS/2 VOICE organisation. On OS/2 we had the port of QT 4.78 for OS/2. A port of QT 5.13 took about 12 months by on person working 40 hours a week. So a 32 bit platform is supported by QT. https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qt5-os2 That is valuable information, thank you! I also do not know if you would need a GCC compiler for DOS ? There is DJGPP (by Delorie) which is GCC / G++ for DOS and comes with a nice 32-bit DPMI oriented GNU C library. So ports of text oriented tools such as dosfsck are smooth if one is a bit lucky. Depending on how far OS/2 is from DOS in the areas needed by QT, the next step of porting, from OS/2 to DOS, might be ... easier? While a lot of of OS/2 API's look like DOS API names, that is whre the simularities end... In terms of memory management its not like Windows 9x/ME. Its a true protected mode OS with its own network NDIS stack, graphical subsystem, multimedia sub system (MMOS/2). Porting QT from DOS to OS/2 is not something that will help as DOS is lacking a lot of these features. A company from the US (Arca Noae LLC) even has OS/2 running on metal with UEFI mode switched on the BIOS (product is called ArcaOS, based on OS/2 from IBM). OS/2 is by far not as depended on the BIOS as DOS is. Roderick Klein ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
On Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 12:03 AM Karen Lewellen wrote: > > I am well aware of what calibre can do, and know some who use it on the > desktop. *You* know. Others may not. The background was there for people who might not. > the question is, if a compile of Calibre is possible for dos...you know > the focus of this list? smiles. I do, and I answered your question. > The qt idea came from a member of the calibre forum at mobileread. I aware of the Calibre forum at Mobileread and have used it on occasion. (I am a moderator and "New York Editor" on the site.) I'll have to look the post mentioning Qt to see the context. > regardless, the question desire and focus is possibly running the program > in DOS. Assume you *can't* and run Linux. The first question I would ask is precisely how you might *read* current eBooks under DOS. If what you get is a plain text release from Project Gutenberg, you can do it. If what you get is in any other format, all bets are off. (If only plain text is adequate for you, I shake my head in bemused wonder.) Just how do you plan to *read* eBooks you might keep in a library maintained by Calibre or anything else? > Kare __ Dennis ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
Hi Roderick, > I am the chairman of the Dutch OS/2 VOICE organisation. On OS/2 we had > the port of QT 4.78 for OS/2. A port of QT 5.13 took about 12 months by > on person working 40 hours a week. So a 32 bit platform is supported by QT. > > https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qt5-os2 That is valuable information, thank you! > I also do not know if you would need a GCC compiler for DOS ? There is DJGPP (by Delorie) which is GCC / G++ for DOS and comes with a nice 32-bit DPMI oriented GNU C library. So ports of text oriented tools such as dosfsck are smooth if one is a bit lucky. Depending on how far OS/2 is from DOS in the areas needed by QT, the next step of porting, from OS/2 to DOS, might be ... easier? > this is starting to sound like a mission impossible. To be honest, I think it would be far more realistic to port some e-book library for whichever formats are desired, such as EPUB and have a command line tool to open and read e-books one at a time. While Calibre sounds great for organizing your collection along with metadata search and management, it would require too much graphics and Python support. But then, you probably know that a FLTK (lightweight GUI library) port for DOS exists, which made it possible to have DOS versions of some nice apps in XFDOS: https://sourceforge.net/projects/fltk-dos/ This includes the Dillo web browser, FLWriter, FlMail and some spreadsheet program. There also is nanolinux, which uses Nano X and FLTK to create a tiny Linux with GUI. So it is possible to do impressive ports of GUI apps to DOS. Regards, Eric PS: There also is the HX DOS extender which supports a set of basic Windows interfaces, including GUI, directly in DOS. This made it possible to run "easy" Windows apps from the DOS prompt. See also https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel :-) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
On 26-01-20 07:50, TK Chia wrote: Hello Karen Lewellen, >> But meanwhile, forget Calibre under DOS. If you really want to use >> it, run Linux. > the question is, if a compile of Calibre is possible for dos...you know > the focus of this list? smiles. > The qt idea came from a member of the calibre forum at mobileread. Well, it seems to me too that it will take quite a good while to happen, if it happens at all. I see the Calibre source code requires a number of dependency projects to build and run --- not just Qt, but also Python, and SQLite, and perhaps others. So one will either need to get all these dependencies working under MS-DOS --- and these are rather huge dependencies, not small pieces of code --- or, at least, to find suitable replacements for some of them. It seems that there is a port of Python 2.4.2 to MS-DOS on 32-bit systems (http://www.caddit.net/pythond/), so that _might_ be a place to start for porting the software over. But even then, there will still be a lot of work left to do. As far as I know, Qt does not yet support MS-DOS (for either 16-bit or 32-bit systems). I am the chairman of the Dutch OS/2 VOICE organisation. On OS/2 we had the port of QT 4.78 for OS/2. A port of QT 5.13 took about 12 months by on person working 40 hours a week. So a 32 bit platform is supported by QT. https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qt5-os2 I am an extremely low skilled developer. But I do not know if its not going to be an extremely large amount of work to get QT ported to DOS. But that also depends off how much of the QT libraries you need. I also do not know if you would need a GCC compiler for DOS ? My estimate is that this is starting to sound like a mission impossible. But I hope I am wrong. Roderick ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 07:52:05PM -0500, Karen Lewellen wrote: > Hi folks, > Anyone know if the qt platform can be used to create DOS ports of programs? > www.qt.io My guess is its creators will know it for sure. Why not query them directly? -- regards, Zbigniew ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
Hello Karen Lewellen, >> But meanwhile, forget Calibre under DOS. If you really want to use >> it, run Linux. > the question is, if a compile of Calibre is possible for dos...you know > the focus of this list? smiles. > The qt idea came from a member of the calibre forum at mobileread. Well, it seems to me too that it will take quite a good while to happen, if it happens at all. I see the Calibre source code requires a number of dependency projects to build and run --- not just Qt, but also Python, and SQLite, and perhaps others. So one will either need to get all these dependencies working under MS-DOS --- and these are rather huge dependencies, not small pieces of code --- or, at least, to find suitable replacements for some of them. It seems that there is a port of Python 2.4.2 to MS-DOS on 32-bit systems (http://www.caddit.net/pythond/), so that _might_ be a place to start for porting the software over. But even then, there will still be a lot of work left to do. As far as I know, Qt does not yet support MS-DOS (for either 16-bit or 32-bit systems). Thank you! -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
I am well aware of what calibre can do, and know some who use it on the desktop. the question is, if a compile of Calibre is possible for dos...you know the focus of this list? smiles. The qt idea came from a member of the calibre forum at mobileread. regardless, the question desire and focus is possibly running the program in DOS. Kare On Sat, 25 Jan 2020, dmccunney wrote: On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 8:10 PM Karen Lewellen wrote: Hi folks, Anyone know if the qt platform can be used to create DOS ports of programs? www.qt.io I don't believe the Qt framework can be used to create DOS applications. And it wouldn't help you because it exists to create cross-platform *UIs*. The code the UI will be a wrapper for will be entirely separate. (There is a DOS FLTK toolkit with a similar usage.) The discussion is tied to the calibre ebook reading platform, with my wondering if it might be possible to create a DOS edition, there is a Linux one, strong in command line options, but I am not a developer. I make extensive use of Calibre, and have it here under Windows and Linux. (It's available for OS/X, too, but I don't have Apple gear to run it on.) Calibre is cross platform because it's written in Python. The Python runtime abstracts away the platform differences, and it looks and acts identically on all OSes. (Calibre's author, Kovid Goyal, is one the the official maintainers of the 2.X branch of Python. Python is at v3 now, but v3 introduced enough differences that migrating Python 2 code to Python 3 is non-trivial, and many efforts refuse to try.) What became Calibre began when Kovid, who was a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the time, got a Sony Reader dedicated eBook viewer. The Reader used a proprietary eBook format called BBLF, and the only place to get BBLF formatted books was the Sony Store. Kovid reverse-engineered the BBLF format to create software that could put texts into the Sony format so he could view them on his Reader. (Sony later switched to the ePub format that is the standard for everything except Amazon Kindles.) Calibre evolved into a Swiss Army Knife for eBooks. It's principal purpose is to create and maintain an eBook library. It stores volumes imported into it in a directory structure it maintains. Volumes are stored in sub-directories by author name. If there is more than one book by an author, each volume is in a sub-directory under their main directory. It can also display books in the Library, but the assumption is that you will use a dedicated eBook viewer device. Calibre knows how to talk to almost all viewer devices, and can put books onto a connected device. I use it here to put books on a 7" Android tablet that I connect via a USB cable. As well as maintaining the books, Calibre maintains extensive metadata about the books, like publisher, issue date, category, publisher's blurb, keywords describing the book, and series data for books in a series). It can look up metadata online and store it for each book. The database uses the public domain SQLite program, which provides an SQL compliant relational database in a single library. SQLite is used under the hood in a*lot* of things. (I'm composing this reply in the Firefox browser, and Firefox uses and SQLite database called places.sqlite to store bookmarks and browsing history, as well as other things.) Calibre's UI does not use a third party graphics toolkit. Aside from creating and maintaining a library, Calibre can convert between eBook formats. I first used it to convert volumes I got in ePub to Amazon's Mobi format, for a Palm OS device that had a Mobi viewer but not one for ePub. (Palm devices were Mobipocket's first target when the got into eBook publishing. Amazon bought Mobipocket and used their efforts as the basis of the format used by the Amazon Kindle. ePub did not exist at the time. Palm went belly-up before ePub came around.) How well conversion works depends upon the eBook format. PDF generally does *not* convert well. There isn't a lot Calibre can do about that. The command line options exist in Windows, too, but most folks have no need to use them. Everything they need to do can be accomplished through the GUI. Calibre scratched a huge itch. Calibre is open source and can be downloaded and used free of charge, but you can donate money if you like it. Kovid has his PhD, but gets enough in donations he doesn't have to get a regular job, and Calibre is his full time occupation. (It costs a lot less to live in India, which helps.) I don't believe it's *possible* to do a DOS port of Calibre. You would need a DOS port of SQLite and a full version of Python 2.7 for DOS as a starter. And if it could be done at all, it would require DOS apps built for a 386 or better platform to get the required memory. It could not be built to run on any earlier Intel CPU. I believe Kovid has an experimental effort to rewrite Calibre in C#. C# uses the Microsoft .NET framework, and C#
Re: [Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 8:10 PM Karen Lewellen wrote: > > Hi folks, > Anyone know if the qt platform can be used to create DOS ports of programs? > www.qt.io I don't believe the Qt framework can be used to create DOS applications. And it wouldn't help you because it exists to create cross-platform *UIs*. The code the UI will be a wrapper for will be entirely separate. (There is a DOS FLTK toolkit with a similar usage.) > The discussion is tied to the calibre ebook reading platform, with my > wondering if it might be possible to create a DOS edition, there is a > Linux one, strong in command line options, but I am not a developer. I make extensive use of Calibre, and have it here under Windows and Linux. (It's available for OS/X, too, but I don't have Apple gear to run it on.) Calibre is cross platform because it's written in Python. The Python runtime abstracts away the platform differences, and it looks and acts identically on all OSes. (Calibre's author, Kovid Goyal, is one the the official maintainers of the 2.X branch of Python. Python is at v3 now, but v3 introduced enough differences that migrating Python 2 code to Python 3 is non-trivial, and many efforts refuse to try.) What became Calibre began when Kovid, who was a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the time, got a Sony Reader dedicated eBook viewer. The Reader used a proprietary eBook format called BBLF, and the only place to get BBLF formatted books was the Sony Store. Kovid reverse-engineered the BBLF format to create software that could put texts into the Sony format so he could view them on his Reader. (Sony later switched to the ePub format that is the standard for everything except Amazon Kindles.) Calibre evolved into a Swiss Army Knife for eBooks. It's principal purpose is to create and maintain an eBook library. It stores volumes imported into it in a directory structure it maintains. Volumes are stored in sub-directories by author name. If there is more than one book by an author, each volume is in a sub-directory under their main directory. It can also display books in the Library, but the assumption is that you will use a dedicated eBook viewer device. Calibre knows how to talk to almost all viewer devices, and can put books onto a connected device. I use it here to put books on a 7" Android tablet that I connect via a USB cable. As well as maintaining the books, Calibre maintains extensive metadata about the books, like publisher, issue date, category, publisher's blurb, keywords describing the book, and series data for books in a series). It can look up metadata online and store it for each book. The database uses the public domain SQLite program, which provides an SQL compliant relational database in a single library. SQLite is used under the hood in a*lot* of things. (I'm composing this reply in the Firefox browser, and Firefox uses and SQLite database called places.sqlite to store bookmarks and browsing history, as well as other things.) Calibre's UI does not use a third party graphics toolkit. Aside from creating and maintaining a library, Calibre can convert between eBook formats. I first used it to convert volumes I got in ePub to Amazon's Mobi format, for a Palm OS device that had a Mobi viewer but not one for ePub. (Palm devices were Mobipocket's first target when the got into eBook publishing. Amazon bought Mobipocket and used their efforts as the basis of the format used by the Amazon Kindle. ePub did not exist at the time. Palm went belly-up before ePub came around.) How well conversion works depends upon the eBook format. PDF generally does *not* convert well. There isn't a lot Calibre can do about that. The command line options exist in Windows, too, but most folks have no need to use them. Everything they need to do can be accomplished through the GUI. Calibre scratched a huge itch. Calibre is open source and can be downloaded and used free of charge, but you can donate money if you like it. Kovid has his PhD, but gets enough in donations he doesn't have to get a regular job, and Calibre is his full time occupation. (It costs a lot less to live in India, which helps.) I don't believe it's *possible* to do a DOS port of Calibre. You would need a DOS port of SQLite and a full version of Python 2.7 for DOS as a starter. And if it could be done at all, it would require DOS apps built for a 386 or better platform to get the required memory. It could not be built to run on any earlier Intel CPU. I believe Kovid has an experimental effort to rewrite Calibre in C#. C# uses the Microsoft .NET framework, and C# code will run on anything that has a .NET runtime. Linux has a longstanding effort called Mono to create a cross platform .NET framework. Microsoft decided to make .NET open source a while back, and Microsoft .NET engineers are major contributors to current Mono development. I suspect Calibre in C# will have better performance than Calibre in Python on the same hardware, and
[Freedos-user] qt and DOs?
Hi folks, Anyone know if the qt platform can be used to create DOS ports of programs? www.qt.io The discussion is tied to the calibre ebook reading platform, with my wondering if it might be possible to create a DOS edition, there is a Linux one, strong in command line options, but I am not a developer. Thoughts? Kare ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
