From:	"Matthias Paul" <PAUL-MA AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Organization:	Rechenzentrum RWTH Aachen
To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date:	Tue, 11 Jan 2000 16:42:42 +0100
Subject:	Possible DR-DOS enhancements [Was: Re: SCI-Tech Display Drivers]
X-mailer:	Pegasus Mail v3.22
Message-ID:	<C4ECBA5DB0@reze-1.rz.rwth-aachen.de>
Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

In the last century, Joseph Morris wrote:

> >    I for myself have (almost) ready many system extensions 
> >    for (DR-)DOS, which I would like to polish for 
> >    publishing once DR-DOS would have become really open...
> 
> What do you have in mind?

Very brief only, as it would fill pages to go into details:

Any DOS environment:

- FreeKEYB 7 (for FreeDOS, DR-DOS and any other DOS), Axel's 
  and mine much enhanced international keyboard driver with 
  multi-monitor screen saver, extended keyboard buffer, 4DOS
  KSTACK emulation, Copy cursor for copy/paste between multiple
  screen pages and applications, macro support, calculator,
  easy access to greek and scientific symbols, apo/accent/umlaut
  translation and literally hundereds of other smart enhancements
  making life easier at the prompt.
  Self-loadhighable (even on XTs) at a memory footprint of
  ca. 9 Kb with all the features included.
  Next version still under development (for many years now since 
  good old K3PLUS times), but we'll be reaching release state soon... 
  ;-) 
   
- Updated utilities and revised MPDOSTIPs (the issues on my web 
  page are quite dated).

Related to DR-DOS, although independently developed by me (it depends
on Caldera/Lineo if this may happen to become part of Lineo's next
DR-DOS box, like many of the 7.02/7.03 enhancements were):

- Much enhanced COMMAND.COM shell more compatible with 4DOS, Win9x and 
  NT CMD, plus a number of features for better coexistance in an
  Unix (Linux) environment.
- (Once more) enhanced NLS system (client/server model that even 
  works with remote resources) with support for up to 50 codepages  
  simultanously (including all codepages supported by Eastern 
  European DOSes, OS/2, NT, 98, Linux, Mac, ISO, etc.) and more, 
  support for multiple COUNTRY.SYS files at the same time, even 
  DR-DOS and MS-DOS files mixed.
  Support for Hebrew and Arabian extras. User definable 
  extensions. User definable country data overriding system data, 
  making it easy to have a context-sensitive NLS system depending 
  on user, application, working directory, etc. Multi-lingual 
  message server for external message files. Support for all DR DOS 
  issues downto 5.0. All this at virtually no extra memory 
  footprint thanks to the new NLSFUNC 4.xx technology I wrote
  back in 1997 (NLSFUNC 4.00 is already part of DR-DOS 7.03). 
- Much enhanced and fixed FDISK utility.  
- Much enhanced external utilities, like DISKCOPY (including 
  better disk image support), DISKCOMP, FORMAT, SYS, GRAPHICS, 
  DOSKEY, GRAFTABL, KEYB, and many more. 
- Alot of kernel fixes and enhancements.
- Some memory manager/task manager enhancements and fixes.
- More "intelligent" and flexible boot loader/method.
- Enhanced CDROM support.
- LBA support.
- (Unicode support on DR-DOS, e.g. for Java and Internet applications -
  still a research project only, but based on the new NLSFUNC 
  mentioned above.) 
- More...

However, at present all these enhancements either require to some 
extend the original DR-DOS sources or only make sense in a DR-DOS 
environment due to its enhanced features. Some will not run on MS-DOS 
or FreeDOS as long as they don't support enhanced DR-DOS APIs.

Matthias
 
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Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web  : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
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