DOS ain't dead - Font editor Kasmar

Laaca

Czech republic,
16.09.2018, 01:16

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0 (Announce)

In the past I announced here releases of my text editor Blocek. Maybe you were aware and maybe not but there was also an included utility Kasmar. It is a unicode font editor.
In previous releases it was rather a toy but now is it much more powerful program. The question is why to bother for such meaningless specialised software. You are probably right however:
- it is a nice GUI program for DOS (there is only very few DOS GUI programss today)
- it is not just utility but program for creation (also not so common in DOS today)
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Current version is 2.0
Compilation date: 15.September 2018

Kašmár version history:
2.0
* program is internaly greatly reworked
+ can open up to four files simultaneously (previous versions were able to open only one file)
+ block operations: now you can do most operations in block mode - with many chars at the same time
+ you can copy block of chars between opened files
+ can import and export VGA font files using ASCII/unicode conversion filters
+ can import font from VGA hardware
+ more functions in the painting grid
+ more possibilities with glyph width settings + better and easier to understand control of the program
- fixed some graphical glitches when compiled with Freepascal 3.0.2

Download here: http://laaca.sweb.cz

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DOS-u-akbar!

KormaX

17.09.2018, 22:40

@ Laaca

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0

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Greetings, my Friend, who knows the ancient art of DOS!

1. I will never ever ask you the question "why to bother for such meaningless specialised software", because DOS isn't about 'why', it's about 'why not'! I am writing this from DOS, so I know, what I am talking about!

2. This is the first time I run ito this BLOCEK. I normally use MINED to edit unicode text files, because it can somehow process them, but can not correctly display anything different from the active codepage. Your program is just amazing because of its independency from the installed codepage and also because of its other cool features, especially the conversion capabilities. It is now downloaded to my HDD, and I think it will be an everyday application on my system. I have only one question: will it ever have bidi capabilities? It could be a more expert software if it could halndle right-to-left scripts. Even the Links browser does not support those. And the old bidi utils, e.g. Nafitha for arabic, are definitely not Unicode.

3. I downloaded the font editor, and I will try it soon.

Thanks :)

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

Laaca

Czech republic,
17.09.2018, 23:57

@ KormaX

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0

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> I have only one question: will it ever have bidi capabilities?

Hello! I am glad that you like Blocek.
Personally I've never had the need for right-to-left writting because I don't speak any language what uses it. Blocek is more or less focused to middle and east european languages. So it is not on my todo list.
Basically it should be possible to support right-to-left writting but real bidi in the meaning of combining left-to-right and right-to-left in ONE LINE would be very difficult.
Now in my plan is better support for word-wrapping operations like fixing the word-wrap into specified value (f.e. 80 chars) or it the opposite way to transform the fixed width text into flow lines.

But don't expected it very soon as for next few months I'll be probably busy with my real life occupation :-|

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DOS-u-akbar!

KormaX

18.09.2018, 15:57

@ Laaca

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0

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No problem actually. It's still a good program, and I can still read and write arabic with your application, it doesn't really matter how the are displayed. Perhaps I will make some fonts for it which contains arabic gliphs in such a way what makes them clearly readable this way. Yout provided the program for it actually so no problem :D I learn Urdu language and use arabic script for it, but normally with the Nafitha utility, wich is incompatible with your app, but I think I can handle it without problems. :) But it's a good thing that your program has full support for Hungarian, which is far more important and frequent for me, and Turkish, wich I use for my job :D If I make some usable fonts for your app I will publish them of course, perhaps someone can use them too.

Regards:
Kormos

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

Rugxulo

Usono,
18.09.2018, 19:51

@ KormaX

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0

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> I learn Urdu language and use arabic script for it

Hindi but with a Pakistani bias? IIRC, Persian also uses the Arabic script.
(But I'm no scholar, and don't have any experience there.) Strange to me that those seem to be written right-to-left (as does Yiddish, why write a Germanic language backwards?? I guess old habits die hard).

> But it's a good thing that your program has full support for
> Hungarian, which is far more important and frequent for me, and Turkish,
> wich I use for my job :D

FYI, Latin-3 (aka, ISO 8859-3) supports Turkish (and E-o, my fav). Oh, it also supports Maltese (only Semitic language written with Roman alphabet, apparently). FreeDOS has its own incompatible variant in cp853/EGA.CPX (also supported by DR-DOS 7.03, undocumented, with one minor glyph error), but you might prefer (third-party) cp913 as more quasi-official. Then again, I've read that Turkish prefers Latin-5 (ISO 8859-9) for whatever reason. But of course Unicode (UTF-8 or whatever) is more much popular these days.

KormaX

18.09.2018, 20:20

@ Rugxulo

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0

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I use CP852 of FreeDOS' EGA.CPX on DR-DOS 7.03 for Hungarian, which is mostly used by me to name files and directories or use Facebook, write my mails, but for the other languages I prefer workarounds. My Turkish translations are made in Links browsers user interface because its features make it very simple and almost every Turkish character can by typed with the Hungarian keyboard. The two lacking letters can be pasted from Links internal clipboard or added later by collective character changes. The result is in Unicode so I can hand them in .html files and they are still readable and usable on other modern machines. However, BLOCEK's codepage converter makes it easier to get a Unicode result from a Turkish text in an older format, but I didn't know about this editor until yesterday :D For Arabic, I have not found any practical workaround, the only working solution is using Nafitha and then collectively changing the characters to the proper gibberish ascii text which gives the proper result when viewed in a Unicode-compatible software.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

Rugxulo

Usono,
18.09.2018, 19:58

@ KormaX

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0

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> 2. This is the first time I run ito this BLOCEK. I normally use MINED to
> edit unicode text files, because it can somehow process them, but can not
> correctly display anything different from the active codepage.

I haven't used Mined lately, so I forget some details. It was something vague like -E3 to tell it what encoding your text files were written in. Yes, it can detect codepage (or maybe force with +E3 ??), and IIRC, it even would color text differently (at least in E-o) to distinguish between "c" and "c with circumflex", etc. I think he even added "x metodo" support for easier typing, e.g. "cx" for "c^". You can of course load multiple codepages and switch between them with MODE (but KEYB might get confused in some rare instances, so you might have to disable that first). For instance, there is support for E-o in MODE and KEYB (via cp853) but no COUNTRY.SYS support, so I don't think NLSFUNC will work.

I'd have to recheck some old notes of mine. I haven't done a lot of writing lately (nor really ever, just a fun hobby).

swf Canada, 19.09.2018, 17:38 (edited by Rugxulo, 21.09.2018, 12:11) @ Laaca	Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0 Post reply
	I notice that both KASMAR.RAR and BOLCEK>RAR contain CWSDPMI.EXE, do they directly call CWSDPMI.EXE or do they check if another DPMI server is loaded say HDPMI32.EXE and use that instead?

Laaca

Czech republic,
19.09.2018, 23:23

@ swf

Font editor Kasmar - new version 2.0

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> I notice that both KASMAR.RAR and BOLCEK>RAR contain CWSDPMI.EXE, do they
> directly call CWSDPMI.EXE or do they check if another DPMI server is loaded
> say HDPMI32.EXE and use that instead?

They check presence of DPMI server in memory. If there is any (like resident HDPMI32 or running Windows98) the existing one is used. Otherwise is used the CWSDPMI.
If you want you can rename HDPMI32.EXE to CWSDPMI.EXE and use it in place of the original to ensure to be loaded.

Nor Blocek nor Kasmar use any realmode-prorectmode API translation (except INT31h calls of course) so don't worry that it will not be compatible.

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DOS-u-akbar!