A Roadmap for the OS/2 and ArcaOS platforms

[Rich Walsh]

I noticed all the icons listed are not in the bigicons folder.

That figures - it was always a mess. (Don't blame me I worked on the code, someone else handled the icons). I see it has been cleaned up a bit but still needs work.

Basically, don't worry about what's in the BIGICONS folder or in 'bigicons.txt'. Consider it a blank slate you can use to do whatever you want. Make a copy then delete stuff you don't want to support and add stuff you do - not just programs but WPS classes and file types too. It's your choice, not "theirs"...

To make things easier, open 'config.sys' and locate "SET BIGICONS=", then change the path to point at your icons folder. While your folder can be anywhere, the final product (say, 'DGicons') should probably go in 'x:\sys\icons' for consistency.

[Roderick Klein]

3) Based on current expectations SNAP is what it is. And 3D support is not useful, what can use it on OS/2 ?
Have you looked closely how well Panorama these days performs ? The real enhancement would be support for  more then 1 screen. Other then that I do not think SNAP will ever get updated.

All modern browsers expect to have OpenGL available for use.

Simply put putting full OpenGL support in SNAP is simply not going to happen. Its to much work to implement it.
I wish it could we do not have the human resources in the community, sorry.

Roderick

[Neil Waldhauer]

Rewriting Presentation Manager and OS/2 Video drawing to support OpenGL may be beyond our means.

Writing OpenGL to create a surface that is only used by Qt or even only used by the web browser might be easier. Leave the rest of OS/2 alone. It does not expect any OpenGl features anyway. What do you think?

[Dave Yeo]

We do have an old MesaGL which, even using software rendering, works fairly well. Unluckily as Roderick says, manpower.
SDL is another library that would benefit.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hello

About the subject in general, I want to send the summary of what we discussed here to Lewis. I'm attaching the presentation file, just in case someone wants to add something else.

About the idea of supporting "OpenGL" or "MesaGL" on OS/2. What will be interesting and less time consuming for the moment is try to only identify the goal, a draft architecture idea and the steps/tasks on how to do accomplish the goal. After knowing the steps/tasks and difficulty of each one we can confirm or deny the impossibility of the task.
-- I split that topic to "3D Support for OS/2 - OpenGL - MesaGL - Etc"

Regards

[Jan-Erik Lärka]

I would like to see modern WiFi on ArcaOS. The WiFi needs to come on automatically. if it can't connect to the last known access point, then it needs to find one from the previously used points. If it can't find one of those, then it can allow the user to do something.

David A started to work on a driver arcitecture to be able to port drivers from FreeBSD for this or something like that, right? Didn't seem to be easy, but a basic driver for a certain chipset would be intreseting to see.
I haven't seen if there where progress, or if bumps in the road has appeared.

I want to see memory managed better, so that more memory is available to the system. Modern computers seen to have less memory available to OS/2 than 15 year old computers. Virtual Box offers 3.5 GB, better than any hardware ArcaOS that I have. The RAM disk in ArcaOS is admirable. I'd like to see it extended so that programs had some access to it more directly than file i/o to the RAM drive.

Modern applications seem to be designed to use up a lot of memory, something that follow over and can't be avoided when ported to this platform.
Wouldn't mind if someone could do magic how ArcaOS/2 use memory and pass on to applications.

Regards

[Neil Waldhauer]

I would like to see modern WiFi on ArcaOS. The WiFi needs to come on automatically. if it can't connect to the last known access point, then it needs to find one from the previously used points. If it can't find one of those, then it can allow the user to do something.

David A started to work on a driver arcitecture to be able to port drivers from FreeBSD for this or something like that, right? Didn't seem to be easy, but a basic driver for a certain chipset would be intreseting to see.
I haven't seen if there where progress, or if bumps in the road has appeared.

A bigger matter than the driver is to manage connecting to access points and managing security. David had commented that the network driver was done.

I want to see memory managed better, so that more memory is available to the system. Modern computers seen to have less memory available to OS/2 than 15 year old computers. Virtual Box offers 3.5 GB, better than any hardware ArcaOS that I have. The RAM disk in ArcaOS is admirable. I'd like to see it extended so that programs had some access to it more directly than file i/o to the RAM drive.

Modern applications seem to be designed to use up a lot of memory, something that follow over and can't be avoided when ported to this platform.
Wouldn't mind if someone could do magic how ArcaOS/2 use memory and pass on to applications.

Regards

I think you misunderstood my point. The hardware is taking more and more memory from the 32-bit address space. Of the 4 GB available, 2 GB or less remains on most recent systems. By comparison, Virtual Box leaves OS/2 nearly the entire 4 GB space.

You are right, though, about memory-hungry programs. I don't know how much longer one Chrome browser tab will fit into 32-bit address space.

[Paul Smedley]

You are right, though, about memory-hungry programs. I don't know how much longer one Chrome browser tab will fit into 32-bit address space.

I regularly need to restart Chrome to avoid exhausting 16GB(!) of RAM on my linux laptop. Memory Saver (in newer Chrome) helps with this, but it's still a memory pig.

[David Graser]

I noticed all the icons listed are not in the bigicons folder.

That figures - it was always a mess. (Don't blame me I worked on the code, someone else handled the icons). I see it has been cleaned up a bit but still needs work.

Basically, don't worry about what's in the BIGICONS folder or in 'bigicons.txt'. Consider it a blank slate you can use to do whatever you want. Make a copy then delete stuff you don't want to support and add stuff you do - not just programs but WPS classes and file types too. It's your choice, not "theirs"...

To make things easier, open 'config.sys' and locate "SET BIGICONS=", then change the path to point at your icons folder. While your folder can be anywhere, the final product (say, 'DGicons') should probably go in 'x:\sys\icons' for consistency.

Update:

It will be a few more weeks until I have something to test.  Everything was such a mess, I can see why it hasn't gone much further.

I have made lots and lots of new PNGs to replace the icons that have no PNG equivalent.  Making entries in the script for system objects that were not included along with new PNGs..  Still working on the text structure to something more easier to work with.  Renaming icons so a person can know what icon it affects.

Now up to 323 PNG icons from a little over 200. I am thinking it may be close to 400 pngs when I am done.

I was wondering, if problems occur after testing, can I boot up and replace with an earlier WPShell backup before testing with another script?

Can one add comments to the text like one does with rexx scripts?

[Jan-Erik Lärka]

I would like to see modern WiFi on ArcaOS. The WiFi needs to come on automatically. if it can't connect to the last known access point, then it needs to find one from the previously used points. If it can't find one of those, then it can allow the user to do something.

David A started to work on a driver arcitecture to be able to port drivers from FreeBSD for this or something like that, right? Didn't seem to be easy, but a basic driver for a certain chipset would be intreseting to see.
I haven't seen if there where progress, or if bumps in the road has appeared.

A bigger matter than the driver is to manage connecting to access points and managing security. David had commented that the network driver was done.

Focused on the way ArcaOS/2 behave to connect to access points and handle security is of course the next step.

Where are those drivers for wifi?
I've only seen drivers for ethernet.

[Rich Walsh]

Making entries in the script for system objects that were not included along with new PNGs..  Still working on the text structure to something more easier to work with.  Renaming icons so a person can know what icon it affects.
[...]I was wondering, if problems occur after testing, can I boot up and replace with an earlier WPShell backup before testing with another script? Can one add comments to the text like one does with rexx scripts?

First, a terminology thing: if you're referring to 'bigicons.txt', then we're talking about a type of text-based INI file and *not* a script (i.e. it doesn't do anything on its own). AFAIK, there's nothing you could do to it to blow up the system, so don't worry about system backups and the like. The worst that could happen is that you won't get the PNG you wanted.

Next... the basic structure of the file ([application] entries followed by "key / value" pairs) must be preserved. And, the names of the applications (e.g. "CLASS", "TYPE") must remain unchanged because they're hard-coded. Beyond that, you can rearrange the applications and reorder the individual key/value pairs.

The file gets read once at WPS startup, so if you make changes to it, restart the Desktop to put them into effect. To enter a comment or comment-out a line, put a semicolon at the very beginning of the line.

[Jan-Erik Lärka]

I want to see memory managed better, so that more memory is available to the system. Modern computers seen to have less memory available to OS/2 than 15 year old computers. Virtual Box offers 3.5 GB, better than any hardware ArcaOS that I have. The RAM disk in ArcaOS is admirable. I'd like to see it extended so that programs had some access to it more directly than file i/o to the RAM drive.

Modern applications seem to be designed to use up a lot of memory, something that follow over and can't be avoided when ported to this platform.
Wouldn't mind if someone could do magic how ArcaOS/2 use memory and pass on to applications.

Regards

I think you misunderstood my point. The hardware is taking more and more memory from the 32-bit address space. Of the 4 GB available, 2 GB or less remains on most recent systems. By comparison, Virtual Box leaves OS/2 nearly the entire 4 GB space.

You are right, though, about memory-hungry programs. I don't know how much longer one Chrome browser tab will fit into 32-bit address space.

What hardware itself use up can't be used by the OS anyway, so we need some redesign of how the system handle and manage memory.
Modern hardware come with a lot of ram, something ArcaOS/2 presently can't make use of either, that is not something for each application or devleoper to sort out. Each application should just have to be assigned a "virtual" address range (from 0 to ...) that the OS translate into real memory space.
I let someone else with more knowledge think about how to do it, but the problem has to be addressed.

[Neil Waldhauer]

I would like to see modern WiFi on ArcaOS. The WiFi needs to come on automatically. if it can't connect to the last known access point, then it needs to find one from the previously used points. If it can't find one of those, then it can allow the user to do something.

David A started to work on a driver arcitecture to be able to port drivers from FreeBSD for this or something like that, right? Didn't seem to be easy, but a basic driver for a certain chipset would be intreseting to see.
I haven't seen if there where progress, or if bumps in the road has appeared.

A bigger matter than the driver is to manage connecting to access points and managing security. David had commented that the network driver was done.

Focused on the way ArcaOS/2 behave to connect to access points and handle security is of course the next step.

Where are those drivers for wifi?
I've only seen drivers for ethernet.

Based a presentation from Warpstock 2021, I imagine they are in the AN labs. If you have a WiFi driver without the ability to connect to an access point, I'm not sure what use it would be. I don't see AN releasing a network driver that can't find a network.

I also think that XWLan was going to be the starting point for writing that software. I don't know if there has been any progress in the past two years. In a way, I'd prefer that GL.iNet was the starting point, but either one is a big project.

I think that USB Ethernet adapters took the same developer resources, and perhaps offers another route to WiFi support.

[Andi B.]

Based a presentation from Warpstock 2021, I imagine they are in the AN labs. If you have a WiFi driver without the ability to connect to an access point, I'm not sure what use it would be. I don't see AN releasing a network driver that can't find a network.

I also think that XWLan was going to be the starting point for writing that software. I don't know if there has been any progress in the past two years. In a way, I'd prefer that GL.iNet was the starting point, but either one is a big project.

XWLAN was/is the software which handles the connection to wireless access points and handles secure connections to them via wpa_supplicant. A network/wifi driver needs an interface the way XWLAN can handle it. Usually this is what genmac does/did.

There's no sense in playing with XWLAN anymore as long as there is no progress in wifi drivers. So I stopped doing that a few years ago. I also stopped porting new versions of wpa_supplicant because of that. I don't have any information nor have seen any test wifi driver.

XWLAN works pretty well with wifi drivers it knows. Although the user interface is not designed the way current/new users expect it to be. It is more likely ThinkVantage Access Connections was 20 years ago. And for that time it was a good thing. But current users expect other/simpler setups. So basically XWLAN provides all you need to handle a secured connection with wpa_supplicant up to WPA2 (not WPA3) with a network driver which offers an interface XWLAN understands.

But it's UI is outdated. There's also the possibility that the interface to the wifi driver may be not sufficient for current needs. But it a hen and egg problem. Until no one offers a wifi driver no one will look into that. Moreover as time passes by it may be useless to look at it anyway cause the UI also is not what users expect today. So maybe David came to the conclusion it's not useful to implement a XWLAN compatible interface into his driver. Or maybe he only don't understand or don't like to compile XWLAN, I don't know. The thing is you need more than a wpa_supplicant and more than a driver and more than an UI which saves some connection details. You also need some logic which switches TCP/IP interfaces and acquires new IP addresses and handles the network switch over. This is what XWLAN does with the help of ISCs dhclient (which I also worked on cause the OS/2 integrated DHCP client is so buggy). And this is all together which makes things so complicated.