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Messages - Dariusz Piatkowski

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31
General Discussion / Re: A Ghost of Christmas Past is Still Present
« on: December 25, 2023, 09:29:41 pm »
Mark!

Glad to hear you're alive and kickin'...even though sometimes it feels like life is handing you one hurdle after another...the good news is: it'll pass!

For now, enjoy those still around you, and the things that bring you happiness.

Merry Christmas and a much Happier New Year!

32
Utilities / Re: LinearMemoryMap.cmd => new version produces an error...why?
« on: December 24, 2023, 08:01:15 pm »
Good sir!!!

It works fine now.

I was using your latest code, but I added my own section in the 'expose' procedure to point to where my Theseus was installed - as opposed to changing the two "well known places" you had already accounted for. Then when I had ran into that issue I commented that code out, but left it in the source, which is the reason why you're seeing the missmatch.

Bad debugging & error reporting on my part, my appologies as that just wasted your time trying to pinpoint where the issue was.

Thanks again Steven...!

33
Utilities / LinearMemoryMap.cmd => new version produces an error...why?
« on: December 23, 2023, 05:06:46 pm »
So Steven Levine published an updated version of this awesome util, but I'm now seeing an error, which I can't quite decipher:

Code: [Select]
[G:\util\theseus]linearmemorymap
Writing results to G:\util\theseus\linearmemorymap-20231223-1059.lst

[G:\util\theseus]G:\OS2\CMD.EXE /c G:\UTIL\MISC\LinearMemoryMap.cmd -  1>G:\util\theseus\linearmemorymap-20231223-1059.lst
Running from G:\util\theseus
NOVALUE signaled at G:\UTIL\MISC\LinearMemoryMap.cmd line 190.
REXX reason = DIR.
Source ="if dir \== '' then".
   545 *-*         Call lineout 'STDERR', 'Exiting.';
Exiting.
       +++   Interactive trace. "Trace Off" to end debug, ENTER to Continue.

   546 *-*         Nop;

   547 *-*         If symbol('RC') \== 'VAR';

   547 *-*         Then;
   548 *-*           rc = 255;

   549 *-*         Exit rc;

ERROR signaled at G:\UTIL\MISC\LinearMemoryMap.cmd line 114.
REXX reason = G:\OS2\CMD.EXE /c G:\UTIL\MISC\LinearMemoryMap.cmd - >G:\util\theseus\linearmemorymap-20231223-1059.lst.
RC = 255.
Source ="cmd".
   545 *-*         Call lineout 'STDERR', 'Exiting.';
Exiting.
       +++   Interactive trace. "Trace Off" to end debug, ENTER to Continue.

   546 *-*         Nop;

   547 *-*         If symbol('RC') \== 'VAR';

   549 *-*         Exit rc;


I'm running this from the Theseus directory, the linearmemorymap-20231223-1059.lst is created, and appears to be fine.

Any ideas?

34
I have an amateur/hobbyist background in VB.NET but have also written some applications in Python (for Linux), in PHP (for Linux and Windows) and in C (for DOS). I'd like to start experimenting with development for OS/2 but I don't really know a good place to start. I know I'll need OpenWatcom as a compiler.
...
Would anyone have any recommendations for where to start? Equally, does anyone know if there's a legitimate way to obtain either VX-REXX or VisProREXX anymore since I expect they've long since been abandoned now? I've been keeping an eye out for them on eBay but haven't seen them come up at all...

So I would say the following:

1) you need to 'pick your path', that being either VACPP (which really means 3.65.x stuff) or GCC

2) if GCC is your choice, then most likely Watcom C is going to play a role, and others who are much more in-depth on this topic will be able to comment better, but stuff like WRC come into play here

In other words, I suppose the two big questions that you need to answer are:

1) are you writing from 'scratch' OS/2 stuff (for which VACPP is probably best suited, despite some of it's current limitations)

OR

2) are you most interested in porting other Linux / GCC / QT stuff over to our platform?

35
Applications / Re: Panorama Maximum Resolution
« on: December 21, 2023, 08:05:32 pm »
...the BIOS offers Panorama only resolutions it thinks the 'monitor in conjunction with the current connection' (DP, DVI, HDMI, ...) is capable. Then Panorama tries to select the predefined BIOS mode (resolution) which matches best OR tries to patch on of the BIOS modes to a better resolution...

@Andi's description above is spot-on: it is the combination of all of the above components that all come together to negotiate the best display configuration.

@Martin,
Do you have the option to try your config using it's native BIOS as opposed to the UEFI mode?

The other thing to investigate is the memory allocation (framebuffer I believe) needed to support a specific resolution. I can only assume that the UEFI VESA Emulator, once the actual display mode is negotiated, attempts to do so, which is why perhaps the following shows up in the LOG:

Code: [Select]
Product Name: UEFI VESA Emulator v1.0
VBE VRAM size 1000000 (16 MiB) (rounded) 1000000 (16 MiB)

In my experience with SNAP in trying to minimize the amount of memory it tried to allocate/address, and which would typically run up against what OS/2 could possibly access on my machine (ATI 256M video card, but my 1920x1200x2 really doesn't NEED all that space so why should SNAP set-aside that much ram for video card purposes?), I took to setting SNAP to use a much smaller framebuffer with 'gaoption vidmem 32', which sets that to 32M total.

By my calculation your 3840x2160 in 32-bit colour needs about 32M, so the current size shown in the LOG is too small, although it is perfectly fine for the resolution that Panorama is picking up for it's use at that time.

In comparison my 1920x1200 in 32-bit colour only needs 9M, and even with dual-head display that's only 18M.

36
Applications / Re: Panorama Maximum Resolution
« on: December 21, 2023, 12:05:10 am »
...I can not say that my HDMI cable is the best quality, but my only reference here is that the same machine (TP T14s with Dual Boot) with Windows 11, with this same cable, is producing "3840x2160" output through the HDMI port to the 4K TV...

Oh, I'm sorry but I missed that.

In that case, you are good-to-go, and this would appear to be an OS/2 matter.

I'm curious, does Panorama offer the functionality to capture your EDID and dump it out? If the answer is YES, you could certainly do that and parse it through a number of EDID decoders.

Ultimately, assuming the BIOS is not the issue here, the reason why this matters is that a video device driver would want to know what the output device is capable of displaying, and EDID is the record structure meant to facilitate that communication.

So again, assuming Panorama is reading EDID (which I believe it is), it should conclude based on that record what the max capability of your display is, and presuming that your video hardware is capable of addressing that space, it would proceed to use that configuration.

I have a boat-load of SNAP experience, including building custom EDID records and flashing those one displays, unfortunately I do not know the Panorama side of this.

37
Applications / Re: Panorama Maximum Resolution
« on: December 20, 2023, 11:24:33 pm »
Martin,

The HDMI cable matters here. More specifically, the cable itself must be designed to comply with a specific HDMI specification. Beyond that, there are real differences between 'Standard HDMI' and 'High Speed HDMI', latter one being capable fo 4K resolutions for example, while the former is limtted to 720p or 1080i (TV speak here to simplify).

Here is a nice, quick and simple article tht summarizes it all => https://www.cdw.com/content/cdw/en/articles/hardware/hdmi-cable-buying-guide-learn-all-you-need-to-know-about-hdmi-cables.html

38
Martin, everyone...

1) The question would be, what features you think ArcaOS and OS/2 are lacking when referring to the GUI that you think will be useful?
- Since this is a personal option question, there are no right or wrong answers. I just want to know more about it.

WPS is extremely extensible and configurable. From my perspective XWPS has been able to deliver the right mix of enhancements. Therefore, there are no obvious/blatant functionality gaps that cause me lost time, or are a major hinderance to getting things done.

2) Once you install ArcaOS or even OS/2, what utilities (or customization) do you use to improve the GUI as you like?
- For example, for me now it is must XWP 1.0.16 with xCenter big icons
- Or some others like X-It to have more function buttons on their desktop windows.

X-It for me had a bunch of "nice-to-have" things in it that XWPS never had, or perhaps didn't include in its roadmap.

I still miss the easy stuff like:
- window roll-up/down titlebar quickie
- folder sort titlebar quickie
- text field COPY/PASTE quickies (yes, XWPS has some of it, but not quite in such an easy-to-use way, and not everywhere)

The one thing that bugs me though, and this is very specific to my setup (which is a dual panel SNAP) is the lack of ability to make applications 'sticky' to a particular screen. Basically, I really want my apps and all of their dialogs to open up on the 'parent' window, as opposed to always jumping to the HEAD_0 (vs HEAD_1 - as the parent) window.

Clearly, this is not an issue if I'm starting stuff on HEAD_0, but than again what's the point of doing dual-head displays if I am always "defaulted" to HEAD_0??? lol

Parallel to this is the concept of having various pop-ups (think lSwitch task-picked window) showing in the currently active HEAD, as opposed to be centered between both of them. But these kind of things are usually app specific, and without deep diving into something like SNAP (which as best as I can tell has been basically 'put out to the pasture') it's hard to imagine this going anywhere.

39
Networking / Re: Updated Samba Client
« on: December 18, 2023, 05:25:47 am »
Only thought is what's VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT set to? Not that Samba should be using lots of RAM, but still of interest...

VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2048

40
Networking / Re: Updated Samba Client
« on: December 18, 2023, 12:11:11 am »
Hey Dave!

@Dariusz - FYI, there is a Jansson package at netlabs-exp. It seems to work OK here.

Right on, thank you. My yum search missed it b/c I left out the ".dll".

So feedback on what I'm seeing, which puts me in a really weird "no-go" situation: NDCTL comes up fine, it maps the shares successfully, but immediately afterwards as I attempted to actually access the shares WPS completely locked-up.

Hmm...OK, I initially thought: maybe some kind of a conflict between the new ndpsmb.dll and the old one (although I shut-down the service in NDCTL before tossing the new DLL into place, and it would appear it was fine at that time). So off I went to re-boot my machine...

...and upon coming back was greeted by a never seen before WPS/Desktop msg: "...system does not have enough memory to show/load Desktop..."!!! ugh???? Yeah, the Desktop never populated, the WarpCenter came up, all my utils fired up, but not the Desktop, just the BLUE screen.

OK, so mind you I am running a crazy large JFS cache, that being 1.2G, but it's awfully nice for my purposes, and I regularly have this machine up for 20-24 days (longest ever was 45 actually) and what usually brings it down is the low shared memory.

But...testing it is, so off I went downsizing the cache, a few attempts later having gotten to 0.5G and still showing the very same Desktop error message I had decided to STOP.

Sooo...whatever is causing the issue is a brick-wall for me. Happy to troubleshoot Paul, tell me what level of debugging you might like...

41
Networking / Re: Updated Samba Client
« on: December 17, 2023, 05:50:16 pm »
Hi Paul,

Deployed in my config of: remote Samba shares are on the NAS box and Win7Pro machine.

NDCTL appears to successfully start the manager, but no shares actually show.

I find the following in the ndctl.log:

Code: [Select]
11:39:04.250:
NetDrive for OS/2(R) Control Program version 3.1.6.941 Nov 17 2019

11:39:04.250: 2023-12-17

11:39:04.250: NDFSDIR environment variable found: G:\util\NDFS
11:39:04.250: NetDrive working directory is G:\util\NDFS
11:39:04.250: File system driver name is NDFS32.
11:39:04.260: NetDrive configuration file 'G:\util\NDFS\ndctl.cfg' has been processed.
11:39:04.260: Registered Version

11:39:04.260: Registered to Dariusz Piatkowski

11:39:04.260: [   local] internal plugin has been initialized.
11:39:04.260: [  ndpftp] (level 2) plugin has been loaded.
11:39:04.260: [  ndpiso] (level 2) plugin has been loaded.
11:39:04.270: [  ndpdav] (level 2) plugin has been loaded.
11:39:04.280: NDF0033: The system can't load the module: JANSSON4
11:39:04.280: NDF0029: [  ndpsmb] plugin has not been loaded.
11:39:04.280: NDF0007: The system error is SYS0002
11:39:04.290: [ ndpnfs3] (level 3) plugin has been loaded.
11:39:04.290: Initialization completed. The control program is running.
11:39:04.420: NDF0045: Resource SMBFS (W) specified in file volumes.cfg, line 4 was not mounted
11:39:04.420: NDF0007: The system error is SYS0050
11:39:04.420: NDF0045: Resource SMBFS (W) specified in file volumes.cfg, line 6 was not mounted
11:39:04.420: NDF0007: The system error is SYS0050
11:39:04.420: NDF0045: Resource SMBFS (W) specified in file volumes.cfg, line 7 was not mounted
11:39:04.420: NDF0007: The system error is SYS0050
11:39:04.420: NDF0045: Resource SMBFS (W) specified in file volumes.cfg, line 10 was not mounted
11:39:04.420: NDF0007: The system error is SYS0050
11:40:48.410: NetDrive Control Program has been interrupted by File System Driver.

...but seeing this in the above LOG:

Quote
NDF0033: The system can't load the module: JANSSON4

makes me think another module besides smbcl418 & gnutls30 is needed?

I didn't get any hits with "yum provides */jansson4"...

Thanks as always!

42
Applications / Re: XWP v1.0.16
« on: December 17, 2023, 05:33:58 pm »
Hey Rich!

having selected the MEDIUM size option I came to discover what I felt was a rather curious font/sizing choice for the default XWP menu, that being: '9. WarpSans Bold'. [...]  it feels (again, VERY subjective lol) like the [non-Bold] 10 pt is the better fitting size.

My overriding goal In implementing 'Text Size' was "user acceptance". Put another way, avoiding anything that would give people a reason for not using a feature that would clearly benefit them.

First and foremost in the list of things to avoid was any consideration of aesthetics. I fully agree with you that 'WarpSans Bold' at any size is a lousy font for menus. But, after all these years of people not complaining about it, it wasn't for me to go changing the status quo. By having Text Size use the exact same fonts that have been in place since eCS 1.0, no one can claim "aesthetic degradation" as a reason for not using it.
...

Understood, and your point is well taken.

Any ideas where WarpCenter hides it's font selection??? That's the only remaining piece of getting to a suitable display configuration for my OS/2 box...tried the old "drag & drop" font, but that didn't stick.

OK, there is something else I'd like to toss into the conversation though: I'm getting weird looking file sizes in the Xview folders, take a look at the attached screenshot.

What's weird about this is that NOT all files show this behaviour.

For example, looking at '192.168.1.10_20231215.txt', in CL it shows up as:

Code: [Select]
12-15-23 11:44p        11,736      0 a---  192.168.1.10_20231215.txt

...and clearly XWP does show that size, but it is followed by a string ".99,999,999,999,977"???

Here is an even weirder use-case, take a look at '192.168.1.10_20231214.txt'

Code: [Select]
12-14-23  9:55p         4,362      0 a---  192.168.1.10_20231214.txt

...and in XWP that shows up as "436,2.0,000,000,000,001". It's almost as if the decimal place markers get tossed into the wrong place???

Is this a user configuration mistake?

The only such user-adjustable config I can think of is the 'WPS => Status Bars => P2', but that really appears to be applicable only to status bars.

43
Setup & Installation / Re: sigh....Python3 upgrade - curl problem?
« on: December 14, 2023, 02:30:20 am »
Last update on my part, maybe relevant to others who might run into this type of an issue.

I proceeded with the remaining python package updates to bring things up to the python2 release level. Subsequently, YUM/RPM/ANPM all appear to work successfully with the following combination of packages having been deployed:

Code: [Select]
Installed Packages

python-rpm-macros.noarch                      3.9-3.oc00
python-srpm-macros.noarch                     3.9-3.oc00
python-unversioned-command.pentium4           3.9.17-1.oc00

python2-dateutil.noarch                       1:2.8.1-3.oc00
python2-deltarpm.pentium4                     3.6-1.oc00
python2-libxml2.pentium4                      2.9.10-3.oc00
python2-pycurl.pentium4                       7.44.1-3.oc00
python2-rpm.pentium4                          4.13.0-20.oc00
python2-six.noarch                            1.10.0-2.oc00
python2.7.pentium4                            2.7.18-3.oc00

python3.pentium4                              3.9.17-1.oc00
python3-dateutil.noarch                       1:2.8.1-3.oc00
python3-libs.pentium4                         3.9.17-1.oc00
python3-pycurl.pentium4                       7.44.1-3.oc00
python3-six.noarch                            1.10.0-2.oc00

There are a couple more python2 packages that perhaps could be deployed (in my specific use-case), but I haven't taken that chance:

- python2-rpm-macros.noarch                     1-3.oc00
- python2.7-unversioned-command.pentium4        2.7.18-3.oc00

44
Applications / Re: XWP v1.0.16
« on: December 11, 2023, 03:18:58 am »
Rich!

First of all, as many others have stated: big 'Thank You' for not only keeping this great WPS enhancement alive, but improving it as well!

Playing with the new Text Size - was on Standard - I selected Medium size, clicked Test and was a bit surprised to see the Properties notebook shrink in size. Is that supposed to happen?

Absolutely!

The size of dialog windows and their contents is proportional to the size of the default system font. IOW, a bigger font produces bigger dialogs. This worked great back in the days when all dialogs used the default font (System Proportional) for their text. As the font size increased, the dialogs automatically grew to accommodate. Then along came WarpSans...
...
'Text Size' addresses this by *always* setting the default system font to a size that will comfortably handle whatever size of WarpSans you choose. For the "Small" and "Medium" (9 and 10pt WarpSans) sizes, that's 10pt System Proportional. The result is dialogs that are the "correct" size - in this case, smaller.

A question and suggestion (albeit a personal taste based one):

1) QUESTION
The 'Text Size' tab HELP states the following in relation to those using SNAP:

Code: [Select]
Note: if you use SNAP/Scitech Graphics, please remove any SET SDDFONTSIZE= or SET SDDFONTDPI= entries from 'config.sys' before rebooting to ensure expected results.

Can you elaborate further?

I do use SNAP, and upon seeing this I REMed the statements in my CONFIG.SYS. But several reboots later, having saived my new INI files (backup) I turned these back ON and see no difference. Therefore I am curious what you were worried about?

2) SUGGESTION
1920x1200 display here (x2 given SNAP multi-head). I had previously moved all my FOLDERS to using 10. WarpSans, and was toying with the idea of adjusting the MENUs as well, etc. Just never got around to it.

Given your XWP update however, and having selected the MEDIUM size option I came to discover what I felt was a rather curious font/sizing choice for the default XWP menu, that being: '9. WarpSans Bold'.

Take a look at the attached couple of screenshots.

- first one is the default XWP MEDIUM setting
- the second one is my tweaked setting of '10. WarpSans' (mostly b/c I prefer the light fonts)

Given the overall proportionality of the results it feels (again, VERY subjective lol) like the 10 pt is the better fitting size.

45
Setup & Installation / Re: sigh....Python3 upgrade - curl problem?
« on: December 11, 2023, 12:37:25 am »
Hi Alex,

For the record, to clear up any confusion: ANPM does use Python 2. (Blame the Python guys for deciding to make Python 3 a different i.e. incompatible scripting language from Python 2.)...

OK, so ANPM does need Python2, perfect.

FWIW, this is not a blame assignment take on my part, rather I simply want to understand the operational criteria within which I need to contain the PythonX installs on my system.

The priority here being: ANPM & our RPM/YUM installations working perfectly, everything else becomes a secondary thing.

So taking Dave's response further: can you define what specific PythonX level of other utils we should be matching up here? Or should I consider your response above to me: pick up everything that's 'python2-xx'?

I just want to play it safe...that approach has worked for me for quite a long time, and I was holding off on this Python upgrade for a very long time primarily because of that reason.

Thanks, as always!

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