Mail Archives: opendos/1998/10/14/14:20:23
| >menu. The New Deal GUI runs almost as fast as GEM, thanks to its
| >underlying system code being written almost completely in assembly,
| >but is a lot more fully-featured. New Deal will run on anything
| >from an 8086 or up, but really flies on a 386SX/16 and up (having
|I messed around with the New Deal Publish that they will let you download as
|shareware. I was impressed, but not enough to stop using Win 3.1 along with
|DOS. One of the things I didn't like was every thing was so BIG on my
|screen. It was like running Win 3.1 with an EGA scrren, but worse. The
|icons were huge, as were the borders.
This is highly configurable. The shareware version currently only
comes with the UNIX Motif user interface and the NewManager file launcher.
The forthcoming version 3.0 is going to have a new launcher that is based
on a desktop metaphor and will have no icons at the bottom of the screen.
A new user interface option will move the Express menu to the right-hand
corner and made larger, and a tool bar will be installed at the bottom as
well. Guess what that's going to make it look like. :)
The release version of New Deal comes with a programme called Configure
that lets you, among dozens of otehr user interface tweaks, reduce the
size of borders and scroll-bars. You can do this by hand by editing a
file called GEOS.INI (there are help files on how to do this on the New
Deal site).
|Also , going by what I read on the web site I didn't think any of the New
|deal products would run on an 8088. I recall seeing an XT version in the
|works in the future products area, However.
The 8088 probably not, but they will run on the 8086. New Deal doesn't
recommend it, but it will run as long as your the patient sort. :)
| >it, and at least one more in the works (guess what it'll look like
| >:)). The existing user interfaces are very flexible and can be
| >made to look like other UIs with some tweaking. I've been able to
| >make Motif, for example, look like either Win 3.1 or Win 95 through
| >adjusting options regarding the layout of gadgets. New Deal also
| >has an "Express", menu which is what Microsoft modelled Win95's
| >"Start" menu on so they're extremely similar.
|
|How do you change the look of the New Deal? I was trying to remove the
|bottom buttons that were so huge, but couldn't figure out how. I also
|wanted to resize the windows permantly. I could resize them ,nut they
|always defaulted to the original size.
Resizing windows permanently occurs when you "Exit to DOS" from the
Express Menu. If you exit by closing the NewManager then New Deal doesn't
save the changes. This happens because New Deal writes state files on
exit that lets it come back up in the exact same way you left it, which
provides an intereesting and unexpected feature. By using batch files you
can pre-save state files for different setups for different users and have
those state files swapped-in when New Deal is loaded, if you so desire.
|I am not so sure I agree. New Deal seems to be focusing on older slower
|machines much more than I think Caldera is. New Deal is aiming its products
|towards schools and business that have old equipment. Caldera really like
|the embedded products as a market. DR-DOS also goes well with Open Linux, I
|have read. I see Caldera as looking forward, but New Deal as backwards to
|support machines (and in effect people) that got left behind and bring them
|up to speed as best as can be.
While it's true that New Deal is not likely to pursue the embedded
systems market, New Deal does plan to go after faster machines as they
upgrade the software over time. The legacy systems market is only the
first push. New Deal can be made to be quite independant of DOS through
using its own mouse drivers, video drivers, sound drivers, and memory
meanager, or you can rely on DOS for these functions. Either way, it
doesn't have a file system and needs a DOS for that much at least. I'd
like to see DR-DOS become the DOS of choice for New Deal and there are a
large number of DR-DOS advocates active in the comp.os.geos.misc echo that
New Deal users frequent.
Steven Hurdle
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