DOS ain't dead - Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

georgpotthast

Germany,
07.08.2011, 18:56

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS (Announce)

The Nano-X/NXlib libraries provide a subset of the Xlib functions for embedded systems. I ported these using DJGPP to DOS.

Based on NXlib the FLTK 1.3.0 library could be ported to DOS. FLTK provides all sorts of widgets to implement a graphical user interface for application programs. Different schemes are available.

Here is a screenshot of FLTK on DOS showing FLUID, the screen designer of FLTK:
[image]

I first compiled and released a binary package of the libraries. This can be used to compile applications using these libraries for DOS. Included are example programs and a user guide. The ZIP archive is available here for download:

http://code.google.com/p/nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos/

Documentation how to port these ibraries to DOS is currently written and tested. I hope you bear with me that I released the binary package before finishing that. Links to the unported source code are provided.

Georg

DOS386

08.08.2011, 03:27

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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COOL :-)

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the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

Laaca

Czech republic,
08.08.2011, 15:59

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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Beautiful!
Now we need some applications using this library.

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DOS-u-akbar!

georgpotthast Germany, 09.08.2011, 19:29 @ Laaca	Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS Post reply
	So far I just have an editor and the game "Block attack" which come with FLTK. This time using a different scheme. What GUI applications would make sense for DOS? Georg

roytam 12.08.2011, 01:18 (edited by Rugxulo, 13.08.2011, 01:43) @ georgpotthast	Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS Post reply
	> So far I just have an editor and the game "Block attack" which come with > FLTK. > > img/uploaded/image55.png > > img/uploaded/image54.png > > This time using a different scheme. > > What GUI applications would make sense for DOS? > > Georg for the UI, add a maximum/restore button in titlebar will be good. for GUI application, IMHO a web browser will be good in these days.

Laaca

Czech republic,
23.08.2011, 20:56

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> What GUI applications would make sense for DOS?
>

I would need some DICOM viewer. (It would be nice for me to display CDs with medical x-ray and CT images on my DOS machine)

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DOS-u-akbar!

georgpotthast Germany, 23.08.2011, 21:53 @ Laaca	Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS Post reply
	If you have a (bare) DICOM viewer for Linux which is just based on Xlib you should be able to port it to NXlib. Then you can add a UI using FLTK. The viewer should not already depend on e.g. GTK. Georg

DOS386

04.09.2011, 12:35

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS | What GUI apps ?

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> What GUI applications would make sense for DOS?

* A browser with upload support (huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge work?)
* An offline HTML viewer (see shot above) ... with some benefits over Arachne
* A CHM viewer
* A painting program (existing ones are rather useless)

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

RayeR

CZ,
12.08.2011, 23:57

@ Laaca

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> Beautiful!
> Now we need some applications using this library.

Nice GUI, did someone tried how well it works on older machines (486-pentium1)?

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

georgpotthast

Germany,
23.08.2011, 13:04

@ RayeR

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> > Beautiful!
> > Now we need some applications using this library.
>
> Nice GUI, did someone tried how well it works on older machines
> (486-pentium1)?

Well I hope that some DOS developers may use my ports for developing applications.

Since NXLib is XLIB compatible, it is possible to port - to a limited extend - applications written for Linux/Xlib to DOS. FLTK is well known and accepted as a fully-featured GUI for Linux. It is intended to provide a similar set of widgets like the GTK toolkit.

I tried it on my old AMD Duron/1400Mhz and it worked ok. It should work on all PCs with a graphics card that supports at least 16bit Truecolor.

Writing a browser application is quite a project. FLTK would allow to design the user interface rather quickly, but porting a rendering engine will be a lot of work.

FLTK has a widget which allows to display its own HTML help file including links and images. Using that I made the following screenshots:

[image]

[image]

The last screenshot was done by downloading the web page with Firefox and reading it again with the FLTK "Fl_Help_View" widget.

Georg

Berlin, Germany,
23.08.2011, 22:13

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> Well I hope that some DOS developers may use my ports for developing
> applications.
>
> Since NXLib is XLIB compatible, it is possible to port - to a limited
> extend - applications written for Linux/Xlib to DOS. FLTK is well known and
> accepted as a fully-featured GUI for Linux. It is intended to provide a
> similar set of widgets like the GTK toolkit.

Maybe someone wants to try porting gifsicle's gifview ("gifview is a lightweight animated-GIF viewer which can show animations as slideshows or in real time") to NXLIB? I don't know, if it's worth it.

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georgpotthast

Germany,
24.08.2011, 13:02

@ rr

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> Maybe someone wants to try porting gifsicle's gifview ("gifview is a
> lightweight animated-GIF viewer which can show animations as slideshows or
> in real time") to NXLIB? I don't know, if it's worth it.

As far as I can determine you have already done a DOS port of this software. So it will depend on what additional functions of this software can be implemented/ported if X11 support becomes available.

Georg

georgpotthast

Germany,
27.08.2011, 12:48

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X source code posted

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I compiled and uploaded a source code package which includes Nano-X, Microwindows, NXlib, Freetype and FLTK 1.3.0 for DOS.

To simplify things for a developer I also made an archive of my djgpp directory and uploaded that as well. This includes the compiled libraries and include files.

Finally I made a new binary version which uses 16bit Truecolor now (32bit before) and fixes a problem with cursor keys with FLTK.

Georg

bocke

26.09.2011, 20:57

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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First, just to say a short hello as this is my first message on this forum. :)

Anyway, I copied the contents of your lib and DJGPP archives to my dosemu setup. DJGPP did work and compiled nxlib demos, but broke at trying to compile FLTK demos with an "out of memory" error. The binaries that actually did compile wouldn't run on DOSEmu. Strangely enough, they ran (rather slowly) on DosBox. I don't think it's got anything to do with my setup, as I was able to run many needy DOS apps (and games) quite successfully under DOSEmu. It might be possible that this requires a bit more modern machine. For example, a Pentium+ with a great deal of RAM. But that's just a wild guess. Has anyone tried it on a physicall DOS install whith lower specs than Georg's? If you have, what were the machine's specs and did it work?

I read this forum for a long time (haven't tried to register before) and I know It would be better to answer some questions precautionary. :) No, I can't afford a dedicated DOS partiton, especially because I won't be using it very often. Usually, DOSEmu is more than enough for my needs. ;-)

Rugxulo

Usono,
27.09.2011, 05:05

@ bocke

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> First, just to say a short hello as this is my first message on this forum.
> :)

Welcome.

> Anyway, I copied the contents of your lib and DJGPP archives to my dosemu
> setup. DJGPP did work and compiled nxlib demos, but broke at trying to
> compile FLTK demos with an "out of memory" error.

DOSEMU is 20 MB DPMI by default, which is ridiculously low. Try using "dpmi -m" or permanently via ~/.dosemurc file.

> The binaries that actually did compile wouldn't run on DOSEmu.

Same error?

> Strangely enough, they ran (rather slowly) on DosBox.

DOSBox actually comes default configured for only 16 MB and needs a separate DPMI host available (unlike DOSEMU). It can only utilize 64 MB of memory unless you tweak its sources and recompile. I don't know why it would run there and not DOSEMU without knowing more.

> I don't think it's got anything to do with my
> setup, as I was able to run many needy DOS apps (and games) quite
> successfully under DOSEmu.

DOSEMU is a bit pickier, and it's basically using V86 mode for most of its work. (I'm assuming 32-bit Linux here.) DOSBox has to go to greater lengths for compatibility, i.e. full cpu emulation.

> It might be possible that this requires a bit
> more modern machine. For example, a Pentium+ with a great deal of RAM. But
> that's just a wild guess. Has anyone tried it on a physicall DOS install
> whith lower specs than Georg's? If you have, what were the machine's specs
> and did it work?

No, I didn't try in pure DOS as trying to get DJGPP, LFNs, and various annoying Autotools working is a pain and often fails. I guess I've gotten more pessimistic over the years after having tried so many times. :-(

> I read this forum for a long time (haven't tried to register before) and I
> know It would be better to answer some questions precautionary. :) No, I
> can't afford a dedicated DOS partiton, especially because I won't be using
> it very often. Usually, DOSEmu is more than enough for my needs. ;-)

Makes sense, it's easier to work with what you have than reinstall everything.

georgpotthast

Germany,
27.09.2011, 10:32

@ Rugxulo

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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Hi,

yes, for compiling FLTK apps you need quite a lot of memory. I have over 2 GB in real mode so this never was a problem. I do not know if DJGPP really can use all that.

My documentation mentions downloading autotools but these are not required to compile the libraries with the source code package provided. Bash, configure and make are sufficient.

The binary version even comes with compiled libraries so you can compile the programs from the command line.

Georg

bocke

28.09.2011, 02:20

@ georgpotthast

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> My documentation mentions downloading autotools but these are not required
> to compile the libraries with the source code package provided. Bash,
> configure and make are sufficient.
>

Haven't tried compiling from source. Just picked up your binary and djgpp zips.

> The binary version even comes with compiled libraries so you can compile
> the programs from the command line.
>

That's what I actually said in the message. ;) Your binary package contains the compiled libs, so I used a different terminology and called it a library zip. I was expecting to see compiled demo programs in an archive called binary. :) Sorry, I come from *nix background, so I use that terminology.

I was actually talking about compilation problems. Those seem to be mostly emulation problems, not with your port. ;) Rugxulo pointed me to possible problem. A part of question concerning the libraries itself is about the system requirements.

If I would compile from source, I would use DJGPP crosscompiler on Linux. Unfortunately I didn't have luck with compiling DJGPP crosscompiler (tried 2-3 times), yet. That would be much better solution, than compiling from DOS. Bash, autoconf, automake, etc, etc, already provided. ;)

Rugxulo

Usono,
04.10.2011, 15:52

@ bocke

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> I was actually talking about compilation problems. Those seem to be mostly
> emulation problems, not with your port. ;) Rugxulo pointed me to possible
> problem. A part of question concerning the libraries itself is about the
> system requirements.
>
> If I would compile from source, I would use DJGPP crosscompiler on Linux.
> Unfortunately I didn't have luck with compiling DJGPP crosscompiler (tried
> 2-3 times), yet. That would be much better solution, than compiling from
> DOS. Bash, autoconf, automake, etc, etc, already provided. ;)

I know I'm late replying to this, and I've been debating whether this is a useful answer or not, but I assume you've heard of these:

ftp://ftp.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/rpms/

Granted, I know it sucks for non-RPM distros, but maybe?? something like Alien works, dunno, never tried (and heavily skeptical).

bocke

15.10.2011, 12:45

@ Rugxulo

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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It's never too late. I don't check this board too often. :)

> Granted, I know it sucks for non-RPM distros, but maybe?? something like
> Alien works, dunno, never tried (and heavily skeptical).

Haven't had luck with that before (tried it 2 months ago). I'm using Arch Linux, btw. This is Fedora build. It might work anyway, if I thinkered enough with it. I don't actually remember what was the particular problem last time, except that it was GCC 4.5.1 and Arch came with 4.6.1. Anyway, I would prefer making native build.

I'm not playing much with DOS stuff these days, so this waits for me to get more interested again. ;-)

bocke

28.09.2011, 02:05

@ Rugxulo

Nano-X/NXlib and FLTK for DOS

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> DOSEMU is 20 MB DPMI by default, which is ridiculously low. Try using "dpmi
> -m" or permanently via ~/.dosemurc file.
>

I just checked. I used even less in my dosemurc (16 mb). I'll try increasing DPMI. Thanx.

> > The binaries that actually did compile wouldn't run on DOSEmu.
>
> Same error?
>

No. Just a blank screen.

> DOSEMU is a bit pickier, and it's basically using V86 mode for most of its
> work. (I'm assuming 32-bit Linux here.) DOSBox has to go to greater lengths
> for compatibility, i.e. full cpu emulation.
>

Yes, 32-bit Linux at the moment. I am aware of that. ;)

> No, I didn't try in pure DOS as trying to get DJGPP, LFNs, and various
> annoying Autotools working is a pain and often fails. I guess I've gotten
> more pessimistic over the years after having tried so many times. :-(
>

I had the similar problems when trying on some of more complete x86 emulators (QEmu and VirtualBox most of the time).