WebSite Information > Comments, Suggestions & Questions
A Roadmap for the OS/2 and ArcaOS platforms
Rich Walsh:
--- Quote from: David Graser on November 25, 2023, 04:19:44 am ---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?
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on November 25, 2023, 12:28:54 am ---
--- Quote from: Jan-Erik Lärka on November 24, 2023, 11:05:12 pm ---
--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on April 01, 2023, 04:32:23 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
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
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: Jan-Erik Lärka on November 25, 2023, 08:26:04 am ---
--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on November 25, 2023, 12:28:54 am ---
--- Quote from: Jan-Erik Lärka on November 24, 2023, 11:05:12 pm ---
--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on April 01, 2023, 04:32:23 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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.:
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version