• Welcome to OS2World OLD-STATIC-BACKUP Forum.
 

News:

This is an old OS2World backup forum for reference only. IT IS READ ONLY!!!

If you need help with OS/2 - eComStation visit http://www.os2world.com/forum

Main Menu

VBOX/2 and seamless mode

Started by cytan, 2008.07.09, 18:41:55

Previous topic - Next topic

cytan

Hi,
  I just installed VBOX/2 1.6.1 and it now has seamless mode. I run Fedora 8 under VBOX/2 and going into seamless mode makes the display take up the entire screen (which is good and it is now running at 1280x1024 rather than 1024x768). However, it's just behaving like a large full screen programme with the FEDORA background not suppressed. I'm wondering whether seamless mode is actually supported in the OS/2 version, or it's just FEDORA 8 and seamless works with Win$?

cytan

Saijin_Naib

Not sure, I've never messed with Seamless mode in any VM before. I'd assume its an OS/2 specific issue for now, it may not be fully implemented.

Michaelhz

...same behavior here with XP and Ubuntu 8.xx. Seems like an OS/2-eCS specific problem.

Michael

abwillis

It probably isn't fully implemented but it still actually works out nice.  I can set it to seemless and then change virtual desktops and not have it change out of "fullscreen".  That was the one thing I didn't like about VPC in fullscreen mode, this works out nicely (even if not fully seemless).

Andi710

Quote from: abwillis on 2008.07.10, 02:36:55
I can set it to seemless and then change virtual desktops and not have it change out of "fullscreen". 

Why don't you use real fullscreen in this case? 'seamless' gives you fullscreen only distorted and has no advantages. IIRC there is something about OS/2 PM (no alpha blending?) that makes the real seamless mode impossible/infeasible.

Criguada

Hi Andi!

Quote from: Andi710 on 2008.07.12, 19:29:42
advantages. IIRC there is something about OS/2 PM (no alpha blending?) that makes the real seamless mode impossible/infeasible.

We have seamless mode in Win-OS/2, so why shouldn't we be able to do the same with VBox? We may lack the skills, but surely it IS doable.

Bye
Cris

Saijin_Naib

Good point Chris, but it will most likely have to be implemented in a very OS/2 specific manner then. I'm guessing the Windows/Linux support for seamless is offered with OpenGL or SDL or something like that which OS/2 doesn't have. Again, I don't know, but thats what I think is at play.

RobertM

Quote from: Criguada on 2008.07.13, 18:22:29
Hi Andi!

Quote from: Andi710 on 2008.07.12, 19:29:42
advantages. IIRC there is something about OS/2 PM (no alpha blending?) that makes the real seamless mode impossible/infeasible.

We have seamless mode in Win-OS/2, so why shouldn't we be able to do the same with VBox? We may lack the skills, but surely it IS doable.

Bye
Cris


Agreed... it is doable... but how much work?

If I remember correctly, seamless WinOS2 actually draws OS/2 dialogs and then draws (Win 3.1 ones) over them - at the very least, I've watched it do that in older versions of Warp on really slow or bogged down machines (that had the same WINOS2 version WSeB and eCS currently have).

I suspect there were some major changes to the Win3.1 code base to allow that. We'd probably need a different method for doing it with vBox...

Robert


|
|
Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
|
|


Criguada

Well, I don't have "insider" information on how it's done, but I remember a discussion where someone mentioned the method used: the OS/2 driver opens a sort of square "hole" in the screen where the (collaborating) Win-OS/2 driver can draw.
It it is so, what needs to be done is discover how to trigger the "hole", and how to draw in it. It would probably require some sort of reverse engineering unless it is documented somewhere.

Bye
Cris

cytan

Hi all,
   I think in the greater scheme of things, seamless mode would be nice but I do not think that it is the most important thing to implement in the short term. I think effort should be put into getting VBOX/2 to read non ISO disks, USB support and sound support.
   
   Personally, I would like to thank Paul Smedley in getting VBOX/2 to work on OS/2. It was really important for me that JAVA 1.6+ would run on my box and this really saved the day.

cytan

RobertM

Cris:

That would seem to make sense with how it is done... I am guessing that the OS/2 dialogs were "placeholders" to claim ownership of that screen area - which were then drawn on top of by the WinOS2 subsystem, and thus allowed the standard OS/2 subsystem to easily track mouse events in that area and then pass them to WinOS2 (which would also explain the problem with trying to use non-standard pointers in either OS/2 or WinOS2).

Another interesting issue it would sometimes cause was if WinOS2 got "hosed" and wasnt drawing things properly, occassionally part of the OS/2 dialog would show through. This issue seemed more prevalent on earlier versions of WinOS2 and using programs that made Win3.x dialogs with weird (not normal) sized controls... like some of the toolbars used with 5 pixel titlebars.

The other interesting thing is, there were other tie-ins to the PM that affected the WinOS2 seamless session. Those can still be seen today... set your PM border width to something small like 1 pixel by 1 pixel and fire up WinOS2 seamless... you'll now notice that your WinOS2 session windows have OS/2 sized borders... but when you go back to full screen WinOS2, they are once again the normal 4-6 pixel Win3.1 sized frame/folder borders.

Me thinks a lot more is going on behind the scenes there... someone (I think Rich Steiner) hinted elsewhere that the seamless interface was actually something written (or re-written) from the ground up (or close to it) by IBM from the original Win3.1 source.




cytan:

Indeed correct. I'd prefer VBOX/2 working, and working well (with or without seamless mode).

The one advantage I see of seamless working is perception... just as I have seen with people running MacOSX and Parallels with seamless support... the computer newbies seem so impressed that the OS will run WinXP apps - and even after "understanding" how it is really done, they still equate it to the same thing since the apps just seem to run on MacOSX (due to the lack of an XP desktop, etc) - since it appears it is the app/apps themselves running - instead of XP in a virtual session running the apps - that is how they seem to perceive it, regardless of what is really happening.


Heck, we (oldtimers) in the OS/2 world often showed WinOS2 apps/sessions seamlessly to convey the same perceptions to Win3.x users... (which is still valid since I still see Windows users amazed that a Mac can run XP apps when they see a program running seamlessly).

But again, you are correct. Having VBOX/2 is far more important - and my thanks to Paul as well!!!!


Robert


|
|
Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
|
|


ModZilla

whatever the mode, i agree, VBOX/2 it is
QuoteIndeed correct. I'd prefer VBOX/2 working, and working well (with or without seamless mode).
nice surmise Rob!
someday os2 will be ruled by the young and famous-at least in the open-source world!

obiwan

It is certainly possible to set up Hoblink X11 to make applications in a Linux guest appear in seamless mode, just as one would display applications running on a remote system using X11. You could eliminate the whole X server in the VBox guest, and probably speed it up in the process. I can't think of any advantage to using the X server in the VBox guest.

There are some useful articles about Hoblink on os2voice detailing how to set it up. Using SSH makes it particularly easy, but if I were to do it I'd avoid it and use telnet, rexec, or xdm, because encryption eats cpu cycles, and it's pointless in a connection to a guest on the local system.

I used to do everything this way, with multiple physical systems on a single screen. I even had KDE on my OS/2 desktop, which, to say the least, is just weird.