Messages

1

Programming / Any standard on exit codes?

« on: April 30, 2024, 12:54:24 am »

Hi everyone,
I am writing a few tools that can report a number of different conditions, e.g. "target file does not exist," "file can't be read," "wrong file type," "parameter out of range," etc. While well-chosen error messages are the best you can give users, when tools are to be chained, it is better to pass along different numeric return codes. Now the question is, in order to cooperate most properly, every tool must know at least the error codes of the previous one, so I wondered whether we have any kind of standard or guidelines regarding this, instead of having a plethora of necessarily arbitrary values.
Thank you in advance.

2

Applications / Re: ArcaOS 5.1 - First Impressions

« on: January 05, 2024, 07:33:40 pm »

Has anyone noticed the language viewer will not show when selected?

desktop > system setup > language viewer

It is a tiny floating window. Not easy to spot, easy to lose track of.

However, it's not all that useful for the public at large. From its help:

The Bidirectional Language Viewer is a system object that allows the user to view and modify various system settings that are related to support of bidirectional languages [Languages that are read and written from left to right and from right to left, such as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.].

In addition to the normal features (as for any Workplace Shell object) The Language Viewer supports the following functions:
[...]
Language [The language with which the viewer communicates with the user. In the Arabic version it can be either English or Arabic.]

and apparently there's stuff for Hebrew and Thai as well, but it is all quite cryptic.

3

Applications / Re: DSSaver and XWP

« on: December 23, 2023, 11:18:52 am »

Seems most of the modules have this in their RC files,

Code: [Select]

PRESPARAMS PP_FONTNAMESIZE, "10.System Proportional"
PRESPARAMS PP_USER, "12.System Proportional"


Exactly, and fonts definitely change in each dialog when getting rid of both. My first try was to just extract the resources and I bumped into a problem with RDC that resulted in an unreadable PP_USER PRESPARAMS line which I kept ;(

Attached is a screenshot of the rearranged Page 3. It's still big but all the pages fit the system-default notebook size.

With this layout, I think the original "Selected module information" groupbox would be even more useful than it was to interpret how the controls inside worked together (especially without a "Description" label for the now displaced MLE).

Also, controls pretty much fill up all available space, so putting all of them in a single groupbox that merely replicates the whole tab page seems unnecessary.

4

Applications / Re: DSSaver and XWP

« on: December 22, 2023, 01:52:46 pm »

Another area where DSS does not respect font settings, and uses its own instead, is its secondary dialogs to configure modules. No font settings in *.msg sources, though.

I tried to extract dialog resources and doff the presentation parameters (10.System Proportional, good for designing, seemingly what gets used live) from a couple of DLLs but not to avail. I also see the string "12.System Proportional" in the DLLs, which is not in the resources. Real work with the sources needed. Or I was in too much of a rush ; )

5

Applications / Re: Re: XWP v1.0.16

« on: December 09, 2023, 10:54:31 pm »

Dave, in the process of splitting your quotes to reply, a couple of things slipped away:

Open to suggestions on making those pages smaller.

To me, the two quickest and most obvious suggestions would be:

-For General parameters, change

[ ] Screen saving enabled
Start saver after [nn] minute(s) of inactivity

to

[ ] Launch automatically after [nn] minute(s) of inactivity

or something similar, and

-In the Modules page, the description MLE is always half-empty or emptier, so shrink it vertically to that size and put it on top of the preview window, and put them both on the right column, with a stretched modules list on the left.

Just my two cents.

[...] I started upgrading the help again, will need translating, diff enclosed.

Please give me a heads up when it's done, to update the translation.

Edit: suppressed special chars that activated unwanted HTML above : /

6

Virtualization / Re: AToF - Platform Build - serving up x64 apps to ArcaOS

« on: December 08, 2023, 09:15:27 pm »

Nice write-up, Alfredo ... your pic does a better job of displaying the "remoteapp" part of things.

Thank you for your presentation at warpstock -- it really made me start 'moving' again... : )

That's not my pic, however; that one came straight from the official FreeRDP site. I'm not really a regular here so not overly familiar with the BBcode in the forum -- my bad that I didn't make the pic source more apparent.

I've installed FreeRDP, sorted out dependencies, and can display a desktop from a Win VM. What I expected, and works well. When I try to fiddle with the remoteapp tab of FreeRDP, there are apparently some additional cfg steps (tweaks?) required ... from what I can find on the 'net so far, we might need some registry settings, and some .rdp cfg file rework. There might also be some github utilities that do the heavy lifting for us.

You have it running, so do you recall or have noted exactly what those steps are?

Sorry but I don't have it really running. I just got a warper friend to run it a couple of days ago as a proof of concept, and it seemed to work with some simple base applications (notepad, etc.) but I haven't had the time to fiddle much with this, or bump into much myself yet. Given my current (lack of) experience and time, you probably may get better information about 'advanced' remote application parameters (or quirks) by looking at the script included with FreeRDP/2 to run Word, as I would assume that is likely just about the one application that will make things the most difficult for 'outsiders' ; )

Edit: one thing I can definitely say is, before giving up, or considering your FreeRDP (or RDesktop) client connections done, is turn on the connection console for them -- so you can have a clue what your connection problems, if any, are. This you can do from the object context menu, as I can't seem to find a checkbox or other setting for that in the properties notebook now.

7

Applications / Re: Re: XWP v1.0.16

« on: December 08, 2023, 08:53:03 pm »

Yea, at the bottom of the txt files is, (now commented out)

Code: [Select]

// Font to use (for DBCS support)
// MOD_0007="9.WarpSans";
Which without access to a DBCS system, I'm not sure about.

Current ArcaOS 5.1 beta has a Traditional Chinese version, which is the only DBCS translation currently available for DSS. I could check myself, but I can't read Chinese and I'm not familiar with the code so I would not even know what to look at, or whether the font stuff is working.

8

Applications / Re: LarsenCommander - new test version

« on: December 08, 2023, 08:23:49 pm »

Hi again, Andi, thank you...

It should be all included in the package.

I asked whether it is functional because I saw a bunch of old RC translated files under the 'locale' subdir with no obvious way to switch languages from within the application (and still can't find it).

I remember I've worked on adding all necessary components for NLS to the distribution script long time ago. But I didn't test it. So feedback is appreciated.

OK, fiddling about a bit, under locale there is an old email called 'reply.txt' that you can get rid of. Its slightly more updated cousin 'readme_translation.txt' (which you could refactor) reads "start Larsen Commander version 1.5.1 or 1.5.2 with this command: LCMD.EXE -rcFileLocale lcmd_it.rc" . I cloned the English file onto a Spanish one in the LC folder and changed a few strings -- LC picks it up with the proper parameters in place in the program object. Functional, but a bit cumbersome to keep switching languages while translation is in progress.

Remember at https://sourceforge.net/p/lcmd-git/tickets/ there's a ticket system. Although I try to read all infos here, chances that something get remembered in future is much higher when there's a ticket ;-). No clue if you need an account for that. For me sourceforge works pretty good with our ancient SM (and so FF I think). In contrary to other sites username/password authentication still works.

OK, but let me see first if I can figure out the locale format ("text" and "hint" are obvious, but what are "alt1", 2, and 3?), how everything is put together (menus seem to be scattered), and whether the autogenerated mnemonics and such do not make translation much of a PITA.

9

Applications / Re: Re: XWP v1.0.16

« on: December 07, 2023, 09:18:50 pm »

Actually it is simpler then I first thought as it is only the WPS msg files (one for each language) that need changing. Not sure why Doodle hard coded the font.

Confirmed. I just replaced "9.WarpSans" with "" in all ss_es.txt PG*_FONT strings, and the DSS notebook tabs resize along with everything else now. (Edit: Re: the hard-coded font it might be related to DBCS support IIRC.)

Is Comet Cursor on XWorkplace, AMouse, or is old IBM code that can not be updated?

None. It is old IBM code that is easy to update (; this is the comet cursor tab using a larger font:

10

Virtualization / Re: AToF - Platform Build - serving up x64 apps to ArcaOS

« on: December 07, 2023, 01:20:47 pm »

Hi,

When I dig into the FreeRDP docs, it's tough to pick out that functionality, whereas everything else in there speaks volumes about entire desktops. I couldn't determine for myself from that single pic[...]

Yes, the OS/2 FreeRDP documentation is a bit poor in the sense that it assumes you already know what the whole FreeRDP thing is about, and just goes on about the OS/2 port specifics, which OTOH look very OS/2-like (and in turn that is obviously a good thing).

The www.freerdp.com site itself is also poor in documentation at first sight, and again you need to rely on a single "RemoteApp" screenshot  to infer that running single remote applications windowed is indeed possible:


Wikipedia helps us out here, though, and this kind of explains why such an obviously useful feature (windowed remote applications) is not overly emphasized in the documentation:

Features
    [...]
    Audio Redirection allows users to process audio on a remote desktop and have the sound redirected to their local computer.
    File System Redirection allows users to use their local files on a remote desktop within the terminal session.
    Printer Redirection allows users to use their local printer within the terminal session as they would with a locally- or network-shared printer.
    [...]
    The remote computer and the local computer can share the clipboard.[...]

Microsoft introduced the following features with the release of RDP 6.0 in 2006:

    Seamless Windows: remote applications can run on a client machine that is served by a Remote Desktop connection. It is available since RDP 6.[30]

--it would all apparently date back to 2006, so hardly something new.

Don't get me wrong, though -- I only learned all of this last week when trying to help out a fellow warper -- for me VNC has been sufficient so far.

Winflector explicitly shows in their docs how to point the server at a single app, and then pick that app out at the other end, and get the single app running in a single window.

Well, this is clearly a commercial application so it is only natural that they are more focused on --and push-- obvious selling points. : )

Perhaps it would be most helpful for us here to be able to pick a best fitting application of this kind if informed folks could help build a prerequisites and features comparison table.

At a first glance, I would mention that VNC has native servers available for (many?) non-Windows platforms too (which allows to remotely run non-Windows programs too), that RDP allows for windowed applications and seemingly transmits audio as well (which is great for multimedia stuff), and that Winflector apparently serves to any HTML5 capable browser (which potentially widens a lot where you can run stuff from), but I am not really informed and something more systematic would be preferable.

11

Applications / Re: LarsenCommander - new test version

« on: December 05, 2023, 03:32:36 pm »

I'm glad to to see LC actively developed once again. Thank you, Andi - will be giving it a spin : )
Quick question - is NLS functional?

12

Utilities / Re: touch?

« on: November 28, 2023, 12:06:49 am »

Hi,

[...] In linux I would just say touch newfile, then I could nano and edit it.  On Arca I use file commander but I do not see a way to create a file (I could have missed it) [...]

I would guess FC does not have an obvious, explicit way to create new files because most of these will be application-specific, so there's basically no point in that. However, your saying "nano and edit it" suggests me that you are trying to create a plain text file, and FC has a built-in text editor indeed. The easiest way you can create such a new file with FC is using Shift+F4. This will prompt you for a filename; type the name of a non-existing file, and the editor will ask you if a new file with that name should be created. Answer Yes, optionally write some text, and exit the editor.

Hope this helps,

13

Games / Re: PrBoom+

« on: November 10, 2023, 01:30:31 pm »

Hi,

IIRC, in the original DOS DOOM there was no mouse support.

The original DOOM had excellent mouse support. It didn't work under Windows (95?) so many people thought there was none, but it always worked, and still works fine to this day under OS/2.

Anyway, I hope I will be able to have a go at this PrBoom+ thing soon <g>

14

Utilities / Re: OS/2 Keyboard Layout

« on: November 06, 2023, 06:33:44 pm »

For completeness' sake, there is Keyboard Redefiner 2. This little Warp 3 -era program redefines the standard 101/102 keyboard to a customizable layout in every subsequent session except WIN-OS/2 sessions. It is ideal to play around with modifying keyboard layouts.

With so many filenames changed in Hobbes, it was a little harder to find than it used to be, but it's still there:
https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?search=redef&stype=any&sort=type_name&dir=%2F

If this is topic is still of interest, however, and real extended or otherwise fixed keyboard layouts are needed, I can produce and compile them for VIO sessions (OS/2 or DOS), PM, or both. Just send me a private message.

15

Setup & Installation / Re: Possible to edit object titles directly with no mouse, and a limited keyboard?

« on: April 08, 2023, 07:03:19 pm »

That looks extremely similar to my Trust wireless USB keyboard (which has an accompanying wheel mouse). It works perfectly with ArcaOS, so no need for BlueTooth for that. The problem is, it also kind of defeats the purpose of working with a small laptop