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Messages - SoundChaser

Pages: [1] 2
1
Applications / Re: Lost / Missing Software for OS/2
« on: February 20, 2024, 12:24:34 am »
Close but no cigar:

http://web.archive.org/web/19980419082437/http://nuts.ml.org/TopBar.html

Sadly, archive.org doesn't have the zip in store. Antony is still very much active. I have a feeling he would answer back promptly if reached out.

If you're lucky, he might have the source code on a zip drive or somethin' :-)


Trying to dig his second website, topbar was long gone - http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://cyberkinetica.homeunix.net/*

Hello

I'm trying to find:

1) TopBar
By Antony T. Curtis
Last known FileName: topbr036.zip




2
the one thing that annoys me the most is the way outdated font rendering. there were attempt to modernize that. I understand the PM and font IFF thing might be in the way. it's the #1 visual thing for me.

otherwise  the more we extend the WPS, the more likely we are to unstabilize it. food for thoughts.

3
Andrew, should the migration route to OpenOffice doesn't go smoothly and you need to bring the WS files to a newer format, you might want to consider converting them to WordPerfect format first. That format is well converted iirc.

4
Programming / Re: VisualAge C++ 3.0 editor
« on: September 16, 2023, 01:08:21 pm »
LXPMs should have a backward compat command line interface. I would try renaming one instance to, say, lxpm.old and have OS2 find the other executable through the PATH as first experiment if there's no configuration setting for it...


5
Apparently, beyond the distribution woes, it _is_ ready? ... such a tease!


6
Applications / Re: SSH - take the long way home
« on: January 16, 2023, 05:58:12 am »
Yeah I remembered one of my friend using putty with odin around 2001 or so... and decided to give it a shot :-)

I managed to have X11 forwarding to work. Due to the richness of today's GNOME, the experience is unbearable. Even adding compression doesn't help. Perhaps an X2Go client would do better.... seems that previously suggested xrdp a better route for remote desktop of that Unix box...

But disregarding the performance, the combo putty-on-Odin-with-X11 + Hoblink works.

7
Applications / Re: SSH - take the long way home
« on: January 16, 2023, 04:54:34 am »
I gave another shot at komh' s QPutty, and found the culprit from previous failures (on which I gave up really quickly, I must admit) - only an old subset of now-considered-insecure ciphers are available.

Back to square 1.

You know what? There's nothing like the original. Downloaded the win32 putty, 32-bit edition. After a bit of tinkering with puttygen to import my private key to putty's proprietary format (wtf, really) IT ACTUALLY WORKS.

Procedure:
- Download putty.exe
- Open an OS/2 Command Prompt
- Open putty through Odin with "pe putty.exe"

Confirmed to work:
- Window is resizeable \o/
- There are some quirks with the cursor (annoying, but I can live with them until qputty is refreshed)
- TUI apps such as Midnight Commander render just fine
- Fonts report negative font sizes for about every font except Courier New (perhaps for every bitmap except TrueType)

So here's my current compilation of the current state of things with SSH client for OS/2, existing and potential:

- Win32 Putty through ODIN - only known to work stable solution (well, it crashes on exit but I can live with that)
- Command line SSH from ANPM - give it a shot, it connects but it's not really usable.
- ZOC. doesn't work. It needs a refreshed SSL stack. Seriously, it's only useful for unencrypted
- QPutty - doesn't work with secure ciphers.
- PUTTY for Win32s - doesn't work, relies on Win32s 1.30 but open source... based on OpenWatcom infamous V2 branch - SSH for DOS - doesn't work, needs wattcp to be ported over to IBM TCP/IP for DOS
(probably easy to port to OW 1.9 and build to win32s 1.25)
- Kermit 95. Doesn't work, but it's now open source and modular. It could actually be interesting to (re-)port as it once supported OS/2.




8
Applications / Re: ssh - sshd
« on: January 10, 2023, 06:42:34 pm »
Thank you Sean for sharing your results!



9
Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023
« on: January 09, 2023, 03:32:01 pm »
I'm using the 1.9 build, which iirc I downloaded from github using a link from BWW docs, but that I'm not sure anymore. I'll have to validate with my firefox download history... I agree with you on the fork, I bet their OS/2 build is broken.

Thanks for all the insights!

10
Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS
« on: January 08, 2023, 05:29:21 pm »
Successfully uninstalled previous AND successfully installed HOBLink ! I did not have a nagging screen and I have a minimized XSession running. It looks very promising!

Thank you Dave !

11
Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023
« on: January 08, 2023, 03:51:22 pm »
Having the libcn in a lesser state than EMX is... well, as a developer I understand that there's so much to do and so little time, so applying YAGNI principle, if these calls were not required when the libs were leverage for a given port (say firefox), it's understandable they aren't at the same quality.

However, when it's time to port, what should be the target now? It should be libcn. But... I understand it can't be used for console apps? Nonsense.

Perhaps the priority of the development community (not putting the burden on one dev, but more in a collegial way - if we want to conquer the hill, we need a strategy) should be to give some love to that runtime while moving forward porting stuff. But where to start? Is what's missing documented at all, or is it the knowledge of a few devs?

Back to vim.  I'm using the OW version and it's pretty good. I was using it as a porting exercise, knowing that if I'd checkout the commit before the os2 support was removed, it _should_ build. It did. But as you confirmed, console appears broken in many ways. I wanted to port console apps, so unless the libcn is fixed I can't... and no problem to debug and eventually contribute to libcn, yet back to my original comments, the setup time is somewhat time-consuming and error-prone.

Still, I want to give credits to the folks at BWW who documented a lot. Now it needs to reach next level. One toolset for porting, one toolset for legacy (PM and DOS or win32s ports) and reduced friction setup for both. I'm probably oversimplifying, still I think a hobbyist purchasing ArcaOS should be able to code in less than an hour, that's not really the case right now.


12
Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023
« on: January 07, 2023, 10:18:59 pm »
I've been stuck in isolation for a week during which I've been toying with my ArcaOS setup (still have to try out the HOBLink files to see if it works on my end, but I digress) and that week has been fairly educational:

- there's a fair amount of source code of OS/2 software from the "golden age" (1993-2000) period. A lot of these came from the GNU/Linux ecosystem and were ported to OS/2 at the time using EMX. If I understand correctly the current state of things, to refresh these usually means *reverting* many of the former port to the then-incomplete EMX port of the application and actually re-do the port to the current BWW libc. "libc retargeting", if you wish. If you are curious, my goal was to have a baseline VIM working with bww' libc and it built and linked, but something's broken at VIO level. My hope were high - and perhaps I was close to my target - but in the end it was a bitter experience.

- there's a fair amount of source code of Linux software that begs to be ported. The QT porting efforts does unlock many of such ports, yet depending on the runtime target of the Qt port itself (is it leveraging bww? libc? Odin32? EMX? Combo?), it can have a profound impact afterwards. I think Paul's approach of porting gcc and sticking to the GNU toolset is the right approach. I'm curious about how the graphics part is done though.

- What about OpenWatcom then? Well, to my understanding, it remains the tool of choice for device driver and OS/2-only development, when you wish to try Petzold's PM book samples or OS/2 Toolkit, porting Win16 code or code from the surprisingly active DOS community.

IMHO, the IBM C/Set|VAge should be considered legacy and worth installing on any developer machine for the debugging tools they provide and when that particular compiler is required. Otherwise, it's a dead end.


13
Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023
« on: January 07, 2023, 05:55:14 pm »
Most desperately so.

Should I use GCC (in absence of clang, it's to only sane choice) or OW? well it depends to who you talk. Many developers only swear by OpenWatcom which is an utterly confusing mess since a developer took on him the burden to revamp the stack with variable-to-absent consideration for testing on ArcaOS or OS/2 4.5 .

If one is to port an app... EMX? Klibc? BWW libc? It appears that bww is the only viable choice, but with all the references out there on the other previous iterations, it makes it still very confusing.

Once you decided the target libc, how to have the auto-tools and cmake recognize the ArcaOS SDK requirements (linker?!)

Each step in the way is a mix of forum or mailing list archives digging, archeaology and sweat. There's some fun in that, but it's not productive. And most hobbyist developers won't know where to look and they'll go back tinkering with their RPi instead. Much more developer friendly.


14
Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023
« on: January 07, 2023, 05:27:58 pm »
Frankly (and I have all of Stevens' TCPIP books here) IPv6 couldn't be lower on my list. We're still on IP-beta (aka v4) in 2023 and the migration was supposed to be completed by 2010. Like FM radio, it's here to stay.

As a community, we need developers. People to back the work of Paul, David, the folks at BWW, etc. The very first thing new developers want is a friendly development environment.

On ArcaOS it is sort-of there. At least there's ANPM/yum for dependencies management. There should be a single 'awesome ArcaOS' git(Hub,lab) with everything you need to get up to speed with a tested stable development kit. That means OpenWatcom 1.9 and gccand all the environment scripts sorted out and standardized, a modern editor... and I know someone can take a few hours to set up by themselves. Bullshit. It's just yack shaving and non-productive. I want Suntan Special for developers.

Once that is in place, a developer community can actually get started to support ArcaNoae, bww and Paul on Qt6, blink/chromium, KDE apps (thanks qt6) and only then - maybe - gtk apps.

But I tell you the developer experience is currently very opaque, cumbersome and error-prone.

Since the most urgent need is on C/C++ side, I obviously wasn't talking about REXX development.

15
Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS
« on: December 26, 2022, 04:13:15 pm »
Same error message about license violation. It _is_ for ecomstation.

Ivan you are my only hope! archive.org perhaps?

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