22 May
2020
22 May
'20
6:52 p.m.
You know, reading about this made me dig out the info I had on the Character Oriented
Windows ("COW") library. I was reading some of the docs and it occurred to me
that it operated much like Windows (probably Windows 1), but what I couldn't find were
any "sample" programs or tools to build a program based on the COW library. Does
anyone have/know of a sample program that used the library? Was there an SDK for it or was
it used only for Microsoft's products?
Just looking for something new/interesting to learn about. Thanks!
Rich
?On 5/22/20, 11:35 AM, "cctalk on behalf of Chuck Guzis via cctalk"
<cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org on behalf of cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
A quick look at the code indicates to me that the Intel translator
CONV86 may well have done the translation in "strict" mode. Of course,
there were other translators, but some of the stuff rings a bell.
For example, the 8080 instruction
INX B
gets translated to
SAHF
INC BX
LAHF
all done because the 8080 16-bit instruction does not affect the zero
and carry flags, but the 8086 instruction INC, does. So there's very
likely a large amount (my experience was at least >30%) of cruft in the
code.
--Chuck
22 May
22 May
8:15 p.m.
Richard said
You know, reading about this made me dig out the info
I had on the Character Oriented Windows ("COW") library. I was reading some of
the docs and it occurred to me that it operated much like Windows (probably Windows 1),
but what I couldn't find were any "sample" programs or tools to build a
program based on the COW library. Does anyone have/know of a sample program that
used the library? Was there an SDK for it or was it used only for Microsoft's
products?
Reading this just reminded me of Visual Basic for MSDOS, which had a windowing system for
the 80x25 IBM monochrome
adapter. I purchased it in 1992 but didn't use it very much, but I just dug it out of
the back of a cupboard for a look.
One of the manuals says "Visual Basic provides a complete development environment for
MS-DOS applications. You can
design the windows, dialog boxes, menus, command buttons, option buttons and other
interface elements for a application."
Visual Basic for MSDOS was compatible with QBasic and QuickBasic and even had a forms
designer. The diagrams of the
character UI screens in it are very similar visually to Windows 2, they sure made heavy
use of the box drawing characters.
Steve.
23 May
23 May
5:32 a.m.
I remember using Visual Basic for Windows, but not the DOS version. I?d have to look
at the version though. I remember buying it at Egghead Software across from my office in
NYC.
Get Outlook for iOS
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 11:15 PM -0400, "Steve Malikoff via cctalk" <cctalk
at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Richard said
You know, reading about this made me dig out the info
I had on the Character Oriented Windows ("COW") library. I was reading some of
the docs and it occurred to me that it operated much like Windows (probably Windows 1),
but what I couldn't find were any "sample" programs or tools to build a
program based on the COW library. Does anyone have/know of a sample program that
used the library? Was there an SDK for it or was it used only for Microsoft's
products?
Reading this just reminded me of Visual Basic for MSDOS, which had a windowing system for
the 80x25 IBM monochrome
adapter. I purchased it in 1992 but didn't use it very much, but I just dug it out of
the back of a cupboard for a look.
One of the manuals says "Visual Basic provides a complete development environment for
MS-DOS applications. You can
design the windows, dialog boxes, menus, command buttons, option buttons and other
interface elements for a application."
Visual Basic for MSDOS was compatible with QBasic and QuickBasic and even had a forms
designer. The diagrams of the
character UI screens in it are very similar visually to Windows 2, they sure made heavy
use of the box drawing characters.
Steve.
4:30 a.m.
I've kept quiet on this thread but now I'm getting curious since I was
the one tasked in porting our vendor copy of GWBASIC to the
Dynalogic Hyperion. The original work had been done by a contractor
and his graphics weren't particularly fast. As I remember it, it was
provided with hooks for the various routines but no source.
I also remember having to relocate the program to high
memory since a lot of BASIC programmers were fond of poking into low
RAM since of course BASIC is in ROM right?
Diane
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
12:33 p.m.
On Sat, 23 May 2020 at 03:52, Richard Cini via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
You know, reading about this made me dig out the info I had on the Character Oriented
Windows ("COW") library. I was reading some of the docs and it occurred to me
that it operated much like Windows (probably Windows 1), but what I couldn't find were
any "sample" programs or tools to build a program based on the COW library. Does
anyone have/know of a sample program that used the library? Was there an SDK for it or was
it used only for Microsoft's products?
Just looking for something new/interesting to learn about. Thanks!
OS/2 1.0 used a character-oriented UI, because Presentation Manager
wasn't ready yet. It's one of the more complete I saw.
There are a handful of screenshots here:
https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/history/os210/index.html
Later DOS-era apps often used CUA-compliant COW interfaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
E.g. WordPerfect 6 for DOS, and MS Word 5.5 and 6 for DOS, both so,
and are my favourite versions of both apps.
MS Word 5.5 is a free download from MS now if you have something that
can run MS or PC DOS and want to play.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/word97win/Wd55_be/97/WIN98/EN-US/Wd5…
3Com had a quite rich library for COW apps on Windows -- probably last
seen for most people in the setup routines for the very popular 3C589
ISA Ethernet card. 3Com's 3+Share DOS-based NOS used it extensively
and it was fast, consistent, had useful accelerator keystrokes and was
generally a pleasure to use. They published APIs for 3rd parties to
use it.
Quarterdeck also published an API for DESQview, but it was mainly
meant to do simple multitasking-awareness for DOS apps rather than for
UI. It enabled copy/paste support and a few other things.
http://firealarms.redbat.ca/guicentral/page.php?mc=misc&pg=d281
https://rkixmiller.dudaone.com/386-dos-environments
https://winworldpc.com/product/desqview/1x
Novell also had a reasonably rich COW UI library for Netware not only
for its console admin/setup tools but also for 3rd party apps, on
Netware or on DOS. Some screenshots:
https://virtuallyfun.com/category/novell-netware-3-12/
http://maques.hu/maques/nwudma.htm
http://rconip.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
But probably the richest Text UI (TUI) I know of was Niklaus Wirth's Oberon OS.
I've put quite some work into its Wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)
I'm glad to see that others have too.
Oberon is alive and well. It runs under Windows, Linux and MacOS, as
well as natively on x86-32 as well as a modern FPGA version of its
original hardware.
There's a good quick rundown here:
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/
This page goes into a lot of depth but mostly on the later A2 OS with
the Bluebottle zooming UI:
https://www.progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon§ion=compilers&…
The official docs and things are here:
http://www.projectoberon.com/
Here's what the Linux version looks like:
https://verhoeven272.nl/fruttenboel/Oberon/index.html
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
6:42 p.m.
Thanks Liam. Oberon is pretty interesting. I may download that just to see it in
action. I?ve used a ton of 3Com cards so the setup program is pretty familiar. I haven?t
used DESQview, well, since I had it installed on my Compaq DeskPro 386/25.
What I am looking for is code that actually uses the CoW library...like a ?Hello World!?
for the library. I do plan on installing VB_DOS and play with that too. I have no real
project in mind for it though.
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On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 3:34 PM -0400, "Liam Proven via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2020 at 03:52, Richard Cini via cctalk
wrote:
You know, reading about this made me dig out the info I had on the Character Oriented
Windows ("COW") library. I was reading some of the docs and it occurred to me
that it operated much like Windows (probably Windows 1), but what I couldn't find were
any "sample" programs or tools to build a program based on the COW library. Does
anyone have/know of a sample program that used the library? Was there an SDK for it or was
it used only for Microsoft's products?
Just looking for something new/interesting to learn about. Thanks!
OS/2 1.0 used a character-oriented UI, because Presentation Manager
wasn't ready yet. It's one of the more complete I saw.
There are a handful of screenshots here:
https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/history/os210/index.html
Later DOS-era apps often used CUA-compliant COW interfaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
E.g. WordPerfect 6 for DOS, and MS Word 5.5 and 6 for DOS, both so,
and are my favourite versions of both apps.
MS Word 5.5 is a free download from MS now if you have something that
can run MS or PC DOS and want to play.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/word97win/Wd55_be/97/WIN98/EN-US/Wd5…
3Com had a quite rich library for COW apps on Windows -- probably last
seen for most people in the setup routines for the very popular 3C589
ISA Ethernet card. 3Com's 3+Share DOS-based NOS used it extensively
and it was fast, consistent, had useful accelerator keystrokes and was
generally a pleasure to use. They published APIs for 3rd parties to
use it.
Quarterdeck also published an API for DESQview, but it was mainly
meant to do simple multitasking-awareness for DOS apps rather than for
UI. It enabled copy/paste support and a few other things.
http://firealarms.redbat.ca/guicentral/page.php?mc=misc&pg=d281
https://rkixmiller.dudaone.com/386-dos-environments
https://winworldpc.com/product/desqview/1x
Novell also had a reasonably rich COW UI library for Netware not only
for its console admin/setup tools but also for 3rd party apps, on
Netware or on DOS. Some screenshots:
https://virtuallyfun.com/category/novell-netware-3-12/
http://maques.hu/maques/nwudma.htm
http://rconip.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
But probably the richest Text UI (TUI) I know of was Niklaus Wirth's Oberon OS.
I've put quite some work into its Wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)
I'm glad to see that others have too.
Oberon is alive and well. It runs under Windows, Linux and MacOS, as
well as natively on x86-32 as well as a modern FPGA version of its
original hardware.
There's a good quick rundown here:
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/
This page goes into a lot of depth but mostly on the later A2 OS with
the Bluebottle zooming UI:
https://www.progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon§ion=compilers&…
The official docs and things are here:
http://www.projectoberon.com/
Here's what the Linux version looks like:
https://verhoeven272.nl/fruttenboel/Oberon/index.html
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
25 May
25 May
7:23 a.m.
On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 03:42, Richard Cini <rich.cini at verizon.net> wrote:
Thanks Liam. Oberon is pretty interesting. I may download that just to see it in action.
I?ve used a ton of 3Com cards so the setup program is pretty familiar. I haven?t used
DESQview, well, since I had it installed on my Compaq DeskPro 386/25.
What I am looking for is code that actually uses the CoW library...like a ?Hello World!?
for the library. I do plan on installing VB_DOS and play with that too. I have no real
project in mind for it though.
Oberon's definitely worth a look.
Oberon also had some wider influence: Oberon's Text UI (TUI) inspired
Acme, the Plan 9 editor/IDE/email client, and some of the Plan 9 UI in
general.
I have VB for DOS but I never wrapped my head around VB and its odd
semi-OOPS. I was much happier in QB3 or QB4.
Sadly, AFAICT, when the CUA-compliant, text-oriented windowing era
came to DOS, I think that for the most part, everyone rolled their
own.
Borland's later-era DOS Pascal compilers made their toolkit available
to users, which QB4 did not AFAIK. So there were apps in Borland
TurboPascal that used them.
This is my preferred console editor on Linux:
https://os.ghalkes.nl/tilde/
I *think* the programmer re-implemented his own COW system but I'm not
sure. Ask him?
It replaced this:
http://setedit.sourceforge.net/
Sadly not updated for modern Linux distros. It links to some info
about COW libraries for Linux.
BTW: I'd avoid that term if possible, as it overlaps with
Copy-On-Write, a major modern filesystems feature.
TUI is the term used in the Oberon context and is a bit more
distinctive; the only overlap I know is a defunct travel company.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
8:18 a.m.
Thanks. I believe the official name is CW for Character Windows, probably to avoid
that confusion.
Get Outlook for iOS
On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 10:24 AM -0400, "Liam Proven via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 03:42, Richard Cini wrote:
Thanks Liam. Oberon is pretty interesting. I may download that just to see it in action.
I?ve used a ton of 3Com cards so the setup program is pretty familiar. I haven?t used
DESQview, well, since I had it installed on my Compaq DeskPro 386/25.
What I am looking for is code that actually uses the CoW library...like a ?Hello World!?
for the library. I do plan on installing VB_DOS and play with that too. I have no real
project in mind for it though.
Oberon's definitely worth a look.
Oberon also had some wider influence: Oberon's Text UI (TUI) inspired
Acme, the Plan 9 editor/IDE/email client, and some of the Plan 9 UI in
general.
I have VB for DOS but I never wrapped my head around VB and its odd
semi-OOPS. I was much happier in QB3 or QB4.
Sadly, AFAICT, when the CUA-compliant, text-oriented windowing era
came to DOS, I think that for the most part, everyone rolled their
own.
Borland's later-era DOS Pascal compilers made their toolkit available
to users, which QB4 did not AFAIK. So there were apps in Borland
TurboPascal that used them.
This is my preferred console editor on Linux:
https://os.ghalkes.nl/tilde/
I *think* the programmer re-implemented his own COW system but I'm not
sure. Ask him?
It replaced this:
http://setedit.sourceforge.net/
Sadly not updated for modern Linux distros. It links to some info
about COW libraries for Linux.
BTW: I'd avoid that term if possible, as it overlaps with
Copy-On-Write, a major modern filesystems feature.
TUI is the term used in the Oberon context and is a bit more
distinctive; the only overlap I know is a defunct travel company.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
4 Jun
4 Jun
5:57 a.m.
On Sat, 23 May 2020 at 03:52, Richard Cini via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
You know, reading about this made me dig out the info I had on the Character Oriented
Windows ("COW") library. I was reading some of the docs and it occurred to me
that it operated much like Windows (probably Windows 1), but what I couldn't find were
any "sample" programs or tools to build a program based on the COW library. Does
anyone have/know of a sample program that used the library? Was there an SDK for it or was
it used only for Microsoft's products?
Just looking for something new/interesting to learn about. Thanks!
Relevant to your interests, as they say:
?
Hacking the Planet (with Notcurses)
A Guide to TUIs and Character Graphics
Nick Black, Consulting Scientist
nickblack at linux.com
March 24, 2020
?
https://nick-black.com/htp-notcurses.pdf
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
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