Hi Tom, Robert, Bernd, a collected reply to all mails in the thread so far...
> Tom wrote: > > > Maintaining is more than just having your > > > fun writing code. > > well - I certainly know better then you. > ... > One less. I resign as maintainer of the help system. That would be a pity. Tom can be very technical sometimes, like 'do not suggest a feature, write the code and I will tell you if it will become part of HIMEM...'. Sometimes he can even be harsh. We are all not perfect... Lucho sometimes gets quite emotional, too, for example. So you better stay calm until the first anger has gone away and then think if you really are so much pissed with few that you have to leave all... > someone with more time and enthusiasm can take the > help project much further. If there would be so many people with time and enthousiasm, that is! Michael added VCPI to EMM386, and Eduardo is working on the big NLSFUNC project. Apart from that, we are more or less trying to spread all really important maintenance tasks among a quite small group of tough guys who dare to keep using their spare time to bring FreeDOS closer to 1.0! Many have just written one thing and then left again - great to have their software, but sometimes you need updates. Check the 1.0 TODO list, it looks so close to 1.0 that (I guess) many of us think that we can just wait for the rest to be fixed. There is some apathy around. But there is also little visible interest in FreeDOS, little applause. People just use it for basic tasks like unattended install or as kernel for embedded systems, but you seldom get any feedback on, say, GRAPHICS. I wrote it because it seemed to be a fun challenge to grab and dither (random/ordered) graphics from screen and send them to HP PCL, ESC/P or Post Script printers. But I would not be suprised if I turn out to be my own best customer there... Some things would need more maintainers: kernel, atapicdd, fdisk, print/printq, ... Not sure about FreeCOM, TDSK, defrag, edit, mem: I guess the current FreeCOM can be called 0.82pl4 soon, and the maintainers of the latter 3 programs have done a lot but now there is nothing to be heard about upcoming releases (how about an EDIT 0.82 which fixes all 0.7a and 0.81 (which are quite different!) bugs?). Jeremy has more or less no time, but still maintains two projects, kernel and atapicdd! > re-written from the ground up. There is a bug > somewhere that seems to cause help it to crash when > HIMEM is loaded. Well I did not experience that kind of problem here, works for me. Working with 2 help languages installed is a bit tricky, but otherwise the help system works fine for me and the 64k file size limit is no problem unless you want to browse the internet with the help browser ;-). > Maybe you could return to Joe > Cosentino's last version, but beware... Maybe you could return to Joe > Cosentino's last version, but beware... Well I do not know who collected the help pages which look too much like MS help. But judging from my extensive work on EDIT the help browser cannot have been too bad in the original Joe version (however, I am surprised or even disappointed that EDIT 0.8x dropped many 0.7a improvements and re-invents things instead...) ;-). Now for Bernd's reply: > Hi Rob, sad to see you go, but thanks for all your time, work and > improvements on the HTMLHELP program. Yes, definitely... > This means until there's a new maintainer we're only able to improve the > documentation, not the program. Johnson has been working on shortening the help page errata list, I guess he can send [the help maintainer] some nice updates already. He is not done with all things, but a small update in the next ISO would be better than having to update manually after the next ISO comes out - and the next ISO of FreeDOS is scheduled for VERY SOON. Next is Tom's reply: > You might have noticed, that I wrote and maintained himem, emm386 > (beside some other things) for a while. We all noticed that, but the core VM86 engine of EMM386 started out as code provided by a computer magazine. Of course this cannot be compared to what EMM386 is now, thanks to Tom and Michael. > well - developers don't need helpfiles. No but you forget that there are users. Common problem in the open source world. That world is filled by geeks who think that they deserve better or more free (as in free beer and as in free speech) software and therefore take big efforts to find, install or even write such software. But sooner or later you will see that it gives a comfy feeling if software cooperates smoothly and has an easy to understand or at least well explained user interface. Current wish list entry: Tell people that they can use EMM386 X=TEST... If you visit Bugzilla and the FAQ system from time to time, you can get in contact with actual users, and many of them are not as annoying as you might think, not at all ;-). They will not send diff files for bug fixes, though. Finally Robert's own reply: > I was suprised by how many people seemed sympathetic, > even private emails, so I shan't give up html help > completely. Great :-). > I'll certainly hand over the maintaining of the > help.exe browser and source. As Bernd suggests, we'll > split this from the html files. I thought those would already be separate downloads anyway? Any volunteers for maintaining the help browser? As far as I remember you needed a non-simple C compiler because the browser contains a zip library... Which 16bit DOS compilers are supported? Would a 32bit version make sense (careful: we still need SOME exe which runs on 8086, but it is allowed to be limited, e.g. to 64k per help page, while a 32bit exe could offer extra features. So you would have two binaries to select from...). > Now I still think someone else might be better for > maintaining the html, too. I will be very busy in > future... You already answer that yourself below... > My job would be to create a forum for people to make > contributions easily. CVS and html is not easy enough > for many people. I will administer a Wiki... That sounds like a very nice idea... everybody who DOES care could submit help page updates, without having to download the whole set and use some complex submission methods like creating diffs or zips or using CVS. In particular this makes it easy for program maintainers to keep 'their' help page in sync with their program. Eric PS: About the HIMEM thread - The /TEST option is used from the prompt to test the driver, while /TESTMEM is used from config sys to test the RAM. There are far better memory test programs (check www.memtest.org) but still I think there is ONE kind of memory test which could be offered for use from config sys: Fill all dwords in XMS with their own address and then check if that worked. This is fast and allows to detect memory holes, a20 flaws and space- time-warps somewhere in the XMS area. And the EXE header allows HIMEM to be useable both from prompt and as a driver, and to use relocations. The exe and the driver entry point differ, but in theory you can let both offer the same functions after some exe-/driver-specific init. However, FreeDOS kernel only autodetects HMA/UMB if they start working as result of loading a driver (not a normal TSR or program). ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. 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