Interest in new release of MFD utilities?

[Eric Meyer]

Hi everyone,

For some reason I've recently been tidying up several of the MFD Utilities
(last updated in 2009), and adding a new option to DCMP that can delete files
in one directory not present in the other (for synching of a backup directory,
along with the timestamp/archive features of CPY).

So I wonder: is anyone besides me still using these, and interested in my
posting a new release? Also, while they work well with WinXP, I haven't heard
much about later versions of Windows, so any reports would be appreciated.
(This would also affect there being any point to a new release.)

Thanks -- Eric Meyer.

[Mark P. Fishman]

They probably work with the 32-bit version of Windows 7, which I was careful to buy a couple of years ago. I've been using Linux for most of my real work lately, and running only a very few Windows-only programs in that environment, so I can't say how well the utilities function.

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   -- Jonathan Sacks

[dmccunney]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 4:28 PM, Mark P. Fishman <mfis...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> They probably work with the 32-bit version of Windows 7, which I was careful
> to buy a couple of years ago. I've been using Linux for most of my real work
> lately, and running only a very few Windows-only programs in that
> environment, so I can't say how well the utilities function.

32 bit Windows still supports 16 bit applications. 64 bit does not,
unless you run a VM of some sort.

I run VDE on 64 bit Win7 and 64 bit Win10 via vDOS. vDOS is a fork of
the open source DOSBox application, intended to allow running old
MSDOS games on other platforms. (I have an Android port on a tablet
letting me run a few old DOS apps.) vDOS is intended to run DOS
character mode business apps, and strips out the gaming video and
sound support. (It's also Windows specific and doesn't run on other
platforms.)

I haven't tried the MFD Utilites under it, but don't know a reason
offhand why they *wouldn't* work.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

Can one still get 32-bit Windows 7? (I'm getting so averse to change. My
phone was "upgraded" recently to Android Lollipop, which is ugly and no
obvious improvement, plus a number of annoying glitches. Where do these
programmers come from -- not just at Google, but Mozilla and others who now
emulate this -- who expect you to want their latest silly ideas every two weeks?)

At any rate there's clearly no need for a new release of MFD, which is fine,
and not unexpected. Thanks to all.

-- Eric.

[Mark P. Fishman]

With the release of Windows 10, I don't think you can get anything earlier unless you're dealing with a corporate Volume License Agreement, which allows downgrade rights. Dell still sells Windows 7 machines to my employer, for example. You might find retail copies on eBay. Windows 8 had a 32-bit edition also; it's on a cheap (HP Stream 7) tablet that I have. You can make Win8 look almost like Win7 on a desktop system by installing StartIsBack (startisback.com) for $2.99.

Microsoft will still "activate" Windows 7 until the extended support period expires; I don't know what happens after that.

[Gary Welles]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 21:10:59 -0400, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Can one still get 32-bit Windows 7? (I'm getting so averse to change.)

According to a DuckDuckGo search for "buy Windows 7 Professional"
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=buy+windows+7+professional&ia=products> the
answer is yes.

For all the "change" in moving from DOS/DESQview/X and Win98 to Win7 I
continue to rely on DOS versions of WordStar, dBASE, Managing Your Money,
REXX, GhostScript, 4DOS, and VDE.

Should you install Win7, do not keep the Windows Update: "Install update
automatically (recommended)" setting as it will at some point attempt to
install Win10.

-- Gary

[dmccunney]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 9:10 PM, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Mark P. Fishman wrote:
>
>> They probably work with the 32-bit version of Windows 7, which I was
>> careful to buy a couple of years ago. I've been using Linux for most of my
>> real work lately, and running only a very few Windows-only programs in that
>> environment, so I can't say how well the utilities function.
>

> Can one still get 32-bit Windows 7?

Yes. For that matter, you can get 32 bit Win10. The question is why
you would *want* to.

If the reason is you still have old 16 bit DOS apps, they run just
fine using vDOS and aren't hard at all to set up.

I'm on the WordStar mailing list, and there are folks there who will
stop using the MSDOS version of WordStar 7 when it is pried from their
cold dead fingers. They have clutched vDOS to their chests because
they can use WS7 on 64 bit Windows boxes.

> (I'm getting so averse to change. My
> phone was "upgraded" recently to Android Lollipop, which is ugly and no
> obvious improvement, plus a number of annoying glitches.

What phone do you have?

I have Android on several tablets. Between them, I have Android 2.2,
4.2, and 4.4. I won't be getting Android updates for them.

The 2.2 device is a Pocket Edge from Entourage, who went belly up back
in 2011. It actually got released with Android 1.6, but Entourage
pushed a beta 2.2 upgrade out the door before they went under. The
Edge is a novelty - an Android device with both LCD *and* eInk
screens.

The other two are from a Chinese vendor who shows no signs of issuing
OS updates. I don't especially care.

The reason to be concerned with getting Android updates is security.
An example is the Stagefright vulnerability
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagefright_%28bug%29) which is fixed
in Android 6.0.

Since my devices are tablets, and not normally on line, I'm not all
that concerned. They normally go online to check for app updates,
and go offline again when they are downloaded and installed. (And
taking advantage of the vulnerability generally requires the user to
do something that "practicing safe hex" prevents.)

And I use third party launchers, so the look-and-feel of my devices
doesn't change.

> Where do these programmers come from -- not just at Google, but
> Mozilla and others who now emulate this -- who expect you to want
> their latest silly ideas every two weeks?)

Every 6 weeks, actually. Google and Mozilla both went to a rapid
release model with a new major version on that schedule. I stay
current on both, and haven't had problems. (On the desktop at home I
switch between 64 bit Developer's Edition and 64 bit Nightly.) The
upgrades are incremental, and I normally have to dig to see just what
changed. There is no obvious *visible* change. The changes are under
the hood, in evolving support for HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

The bit that may bite me down the road is that using XUL in Firefox
extensions is now deprecated, and future extensions should be pure
JavaScript. (Addons in Mozilla Update that are "restartless" are
JavaScript. Things that require a restart incorporate XUL.) This is
intended to reduce the possible attack surface, since XUL operates in
a privileged context, but there are things doable using XUL that can't
be done in pure JavaScript. I'm waiting to see what breaks
irretrievably as this gets phased in..

> At any rate there's clearly no need for a new release of MFD, which is fine,
> and not unexpected. Thanks to all.

If you release it, we'll grab it, but agreed, there's not really a need for it.

> -- Eric.
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[dmccunney]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Gary Welles <ga...@wellesway.com> wrote:

> Should you install Win7, do not keep the Windows Update: "Install update
> automatically (recommended)" setting as it will at some point attempt to
> install Win10.

From elsewhere, avoid the following updates if you care about Windows
phoning home:

Win 7 Updates for telemetry / tracking

3080149 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
3075249 Update that adds telemetry points to consent.exe in Win7, 8.1
3080149 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
3068708 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry (Yes)
3022345 Update to enable Diagnostics/Usage Tracking Service in Windows
3021917 Windows 10 Upgrade preparation + telemetry

Win 7 Update KB’s - related to Win 10 upgrade capability (unless you
are planning to upgrade to Win 10)

2966583 Improvements for System Update Readiness Tool
2952664 Improvements for the System Update Readiness Tool
3035583 Enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications
2990214 Enables you to upgrade from Windows 7 to a later version
3068708 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
3021917 Update to Windows 7 SP1 for performance improvements
3050265 Windows Update Client for Windows 7: June 2015

> -- Gary
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> If the reason is you still have old 16 bit DOS apps, they run just
> fine using vDOS and aren't hard at all to set up.

Thanks for keeping me reminded about vDOS... some things will have to be pried
from my cold dead fingers too.

> What phone do you have?

Droid Turbo, from last year (not the new model 2). Android 5.11. I really
liked the 4.4 it came with and (this is true on a computer too of course)
would rather not have OS updates at all, certainly not automatically or
without choice, except for security.

I assumed Stagefright had just been fixed in a security update we got last
month, as I rather doubt they intend to put 6.0 on this phone. In any case,
turning autoretrieval off in SMS seems a reasonably adequate solution.

-- Eric.

[dmccunney]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 2:41 PM, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> dmccunney wrote:
>>
>> If the reason is you still have old 16 bit DOS apps, they run just
>> fine using vDOS and aren't hard at all to set up.
>
> Thanks for keeping me reminded about vDOS... some things will have to be
> pried from my cold dead fingers too.

You're welcome. As mentioned previously, vDOS is a fork of DOSBox
(which I use an Android port of to run a couple of old DOS apps on my
tablets.) vDOS only runs on Windows, and is intended to support
character mode business apps, so it strips out the gaming specific
video and sound stuff in DOSBox.

Use is simple. Put the vDOS executable in a directory in your PATH.
Put each DOS app you want to run in a directory. Put a copy of the
vDOS eutoexec.txt and config.txt files in the directory, customized as
required. Create a shortcut that invokes vDOS, and starts it in the
DOS app directory. It will read the autoexec and config files, and
run the DOS app. (You start the DOS app from the vDOS autotexec
file.) Works fine here, and is how I run VDE under 64 bit Win7 and
Win10.

>> What phone do you have?
>
> Droid Turbo, from last year (not the new model 2). Android 5.11. I really
> liked the 4.4 it came with and (this is true on a computer too of course)
> would rather not have OS updates at all, certainly not automatically or
> without choice, except for security.
>
> I assumed Stagefright had just been fixed in a security update we got last
> month, as I rather doubt they intend to put 6.0 on this phone. In any case,
> turning autoretrieval off in SMS seems a reasonably adequate solution.

Google is damned if they do, and damned if they don't. One of the
single biggest complaints users have is devices that *don't* get
Android updates, and Google had been trying to get OEMs that offer
Android devices to offer them.

I wouldn't mind staying current, but as mentioned my use cases don't
require it. If I had an Android *phone* I might have stronger
feelings.

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 11:29 AM, dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm on the WordStar mailing list, and there are folks there who will
> stop using the MSDOS version of WordStar 7 when it is pried from their
> cold dead fingers. They have clutched vDOS to their chests because
> they can use WS7 on 64 bit Windows boxes.

And speaking of which, I just saw a query on the WS mailing list from
someone who copied their WS installation to a new machine, and didn't
understand why they were getting error messages about WS not being
able to find overlay files that were in the WS directory.

The answer was that they needed to run WSChange and fill in the blanks
to tell WS where things lived. It did *not* simply look in the
current directory to find components like every other DOS app would.
I never quite understood how a major program could go through seven
full MSDOS versions and never get that basic capability, but it helped
explain how WordPerfect ate it for lunch.

And the fact that VDE is self contained and has everything in the main
executable is a reason I always preferred it.
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Moy Wong]

I'm no expert, but wasn't WordStar 3 and its contemporary, DOS 1.x, both ported directly from CP/M? Both DOS 1.x and 2.x used FCBs (just like CP/M) and could only understand plain filenames without a path. Hence the trend back then for applications upon installation to amend the %PATH% environment variable. And--my memory is really faint on this--I think the program, which ran off the floppy, first had to be "installed" to run from the drive containing the program floppy!

Moy

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Moy Wong <m...@panix.com> wrote:
> I'm no expert, but wasn't WordStar 3 and its contemporary, DOS 1.x, both ported directly from CP/M?

WordStar certainly was. MSDOS had its origins in 86DOS, an OS by
Seattle Computer Products for a line of 8086 based micros they made
using an S-100 bus. MS bought it from them when IBM asked them for an
OS for the PC as well as a version of BASIC. I don't recall if 86DOS
was a CP/M port, (it might well have been ), but it certainly looked
like it under the hood, precisely to make it easier to port existing
apps like WS and VisiCalc to the PC.

> Both DOS 1.x and 2.x used FCBs (just like CP/M) and could only understand plain filenames without a path.

Yeah, file handles came later. Various other legacy stuff came along
for the ride, like the usage of ^Z as an EOF marker. CP/M did that
because up until CP/M 3.0, it didn't store the *length* of a file in
the directory entry, and the OS needed a marker to tell it where the
file ended on disk. I think it took till DOS 5.0 before that
compatibility hack went away.

> Hence the trend back then for applications upon installation to amend the %PATH% environment variable.

To make it easier to run them without an explicit path name. There
was also a utility or two back then that extended PATH processing to
data as well as programs, so that you didn't necessarily have to be in
a program's installation directory for it to find things like
overlays.

> And--my memory is really faint on this--I think the program, which ran off the floppy, first had to be "installed" to run from the drive containing the program floppy!

WS? Yeah, that's my memory, too. MicroPro enhanced the functionality
of WS, but never did seem to update it to take advantage of more
powerful OS functions.

> Moy
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> The answer was that they needed to run WSChange and fill in the blanks

> to tell WS where things lived... it helped

> explain how WordPerfect ate it for lunch.
> And the fact that VDE is self contained and has everything in the main
> executable is a reason I always preferred it.

This is something you're only likely to do once for a new installation, so
most people (even I) probably don't care that much. Not compared to having
the Ctrl key moved to an inaccessible spot on the keyboard, anyway. (What
else do folks on that list imagine doomed WS?)

Oddly enough I finally switched to WordPerfect for serious writing, which of
course is now a dinosaur itself.

I actually considered overlays once for VDE, but decided against it. Even for
customization, VINST modifies the EXE file itself, rather than a data file
that needs to be read. Some would consider that crude, but I stuck with it.
(Only the optional speller is an overlay.)

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

I started out with WS 3 on an Osborne Executive running CP/M "Plus" (was that
3.0?). There was actually 128k RAM, thanks to a second bank of 64k that
nothing was ever capable of accessing, including WS I'm sure, although somehow
it did give you a few extra K of TPA.

The floppy drives only held about 180k, so it was necessary to run the program
from one drive (normally A:) with your data on the other. I think you would
only have needed to modify WS if you wanted to do something else like run the
program from a RAM disk or hard drive.

-- Eric.

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 12:29 PM, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> dmccunney wrote:
>>
>> The answer was that they needed to run WSChange and fill in the blanks to
>> tell WS where things lived... it helped explain how WordPerfect ate it for lunch.
>> And the fact that VDE is self contained and has everything in the main
>> executable is a reason I always preferred it.
>
> This is something you're only likely to do once for a new installation, so
> most people (even I) probably don't care that much. Not compared to having
> the Ctrl key moved to an inaccessible spot on the keyboard, anyway. (What
> else do folks on that list imagine doomed WS?)

<grin>

Oddly, the location of the Ctrl key is not something I've seen
mentioned on the WS list. The advantage of the WS command set is not
having to remove your hands from the home row to do things, and the
Ctrl key isn't all that inaccessible.

I recall greater howls from the WP folks when IBM moved the PC F-keys
from two vertical rows of five down the left to a horizontal row of
twelve across the top. WP users were accustomed to hitting the F-keys
with left pinkie, so not having to remove hands from the home row to
do things.

> Oddly enough I finally switched to WordPerfect for serious writing, which of
> course is now a dinosaur itself.

It still exists for Windows from Corel, but as far as I can tell is at
best hanging on to an embedded market. (And not developing for
Windows in time is what doomed WP vs Word.)

> I actually considered overlays once for VDE, but decided against it. Even
> for customization, VINST modifies the EXE file itself, rather than a data
> file that needs to be read. Some would consider that crude, but I stuck
> with it. (Only the optional speller is an overlay.)

What would you have put in the overlays aside from the speller?

Most software I use that can be customized uses an external data file,
and customization is done from within the program. The question tends
to be the location of the config data, and whether it's in the Windows
registry or a data file in the program directory or the user's
directory.

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I started out with WS 3 on an Osborne Executive running CP/M "Plus" (was
> that 3.0?).

I think so.

> There was actually 128k RAM, thanks to a second bank of 64k
> that nothing was ever capable of accessing, including WS I'm sure, although
> somehow it did give you a few extra K of TPA.

Sounds like Osbourne thought "If we build it, they will come",
anticipating software developed that could use it.

I logged time on Commodore 64s. They had 64K RAM and 16K ROM. The
6510 CPU had a total address space of 64K, and the default
configuration mapped the 8K kernel ROM and 8K BASIC ROM into the
address space. But you could twiddle bits to alter the mapping. One
utility I used stored program code and data in the RAM normally mapped
out, and fiddled the mapping to access it. The Restore key on the C64
KB generated a non-maskable interrupt. When pressed, the OS normally
checked whether the Run/Stop key was also pressed, and if it was, did
a warm start. The utility changed that to do other things if the
Run/Stop key wasn't pressed, like pop up a menu stored in "hidden"
RAM. You had to be careful your code wasn't trying to call functions
in the kernel or BASIC ROMs if they were mapped out, but it worked
nicely.

The Commodore 128 had 128K RAM, and a second Z-80 CPU and could run
CP/M 3.0. People did serious hacking on it, and I saw references hard
drives and additional RAM used as ramdisks. I was tempted, off and
on, to get a 128 and add additional RAM to be able to run the GEOS
environment from a ramdisk. GEOS was remarkable in what it managed to
do in 64K, including a GUI OS and apps, but running off the dead slow
1541 floppy was painful. You turned on the C64, told GEOS to,load
from floppy, and went off and made coffee. When coffee was made and
you had drunk a cup, GEOS might be ready...

> The floppy drives only held about 180k, so it was necessary to run the
> program from one drive (normally A:) with your data on the other. I think
> you would only have needed to modify WS if you wanted to do something else
> like run the program from a RAM disk or hard drive.

That was DOS 1.X, too. I do not miss dual floppy setups.

I have a USB floppy drive that sees occasional use. My older desktop
had a half-height dual floppy drive with 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy
drives, and a jumper that determined which was seen as drive A. That
became unusable after a motherboard change because the new BIOS
wouldn't see both drives. Pity, because I still had some ancient
stuff backed up on 5.25 floppies.

[Gary Welles]

On Wed, 04 Nov 2015 12:29:13 -0500, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is something you're only likely to do once for a new installation,
> so most people (even I) probably don't care that much. Not compared to
> having the Ctrl key moved to an inaccessible spot on the keyboard,
> anyway. (What else do folks on that list imagine doomed WS?)

Considering that WordStar more or less perfected the word processor, the
short answer would be that WS (MultiMate or WordPerfect) didn't become MS
Word.

As noted, many of us continue to use WordStar because it is better for one
thing or another.

In the mid-1980s I was told Nota Bene "does it all". Considering what
these writers say, has yet to meet it's doom:

Nota Bene Authors
<http://www.notabene.com/NBAuthors.html>

I'm mildly depressed thinking that MS Office training is somehow
considered a prerequisite for higher education. Perhaps if students
thought of themselves a scholars and their term papers as humble body of
work to be built upon rather than one .doc after another.

-- Gary

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Gary Welles <ga...@wellesway.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Nov 2015 12:29:13 -0500, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is something you're only likely to do once for a new installation, so
>> most people (even I) probably don't care that much. Not compared to having
>> the Ctrl key moved to an inaccessible spot on the keyboard, anyway. (What
>> else do folks on that list imagine doomed WS?)
>
> Considering that WordStar more or less perfected the word processor, the
> short answer would be that WS (MultiMate or WordPerfect) didn't become MS
> Word.

Largely. WP shot itself in the foot by not developing a version for
Windows soon enough. By the time they did, Word owned the market. WS
took its eye off the ball even earlier, and diversified into other
products, allowing WPCorp to eat WS for lunch.

> As noted, many of us continue to use WordStar because it is better for one
> thing or another.
>
> In the mid-1980s I was told Nota Bene "does it all". Considering what these
> writers say, has yet to meet it's doom:
>
> Nota Bene Authors
> <http://www.notabene.com/NBAuthors.html>

Nota Bene began as an OEM version of XYWrite, aimed at the scholarly
market. I described XYWrite as a programming language for
manipulating text, wrapped in a word processor disguise. If you were
fluent in XBL, you could get XY to do almost anything. (It reminded
me of Gnu Emacs and Emacs Lisp in that regard.)

XYWrite, in turn, was a descendant of the Atex typesetting system used
by various newspapers, and developed by the same folks.

But XYWrite and Emacs shared a similar "gotcha!" - you really had to
customize them to make effective use of them, and *doing* the
customization carried a steep learning curve.

I was a member of the NYC XYWrite User's Group back when. One of the
members worked for a big brokerage outfit. Analysts got real time
stock data from Tandem mainframes, imported it into Lotus 1,2,3 to do
analysis, then wrote commentary in XYWrite. The chap I met used the
XYWrite Help facility to implement a Lotus 1,2,3 style menu bar
interface that integrated the functions, so the users mostly didn't
have to be aware different programs were doing the work under the
hood. You could do things like that with XYWrite.

One area where Nota Bene shined was that it was more usable "out of
the box", and had a better default interface that was more intuitive
for users and required less customization to be *able* to use it..

Nota Bene is still around, the the former co-founder and lead
developer of XYWrite is an investor and contributes code.

> I'm mildly depressed thinking that MS Office training is somehow considered
> a prerequisite for higher education. Perhaps if students thought of
> themselves a scholars and their term papers as humble body of work to be
> built upon rather than one .doc after another.

MS Office owns the market, and you better be able to use Word, Excel,
and PowerPoint. Along similar lines, if you are in the graphic arts,
you use Photoshop, period. There are other products (like the Gimp
under Linux) that do similar things, but they aren't Photoshop.
Nothing else comes close. And if you are doing markup, typesetting,
and page layout, you use InDesign. Again, it's the industry standard.

Students seeing themselves as scholars won't affect that sort of
relationship. Even if they *do* see their term papers as humble body
of work to be built upon, they have to use *something* to *write* the
papers. The standard tool is Word.

[Mark P. Fishman]

Microsoft deliberately influenced WordPerfect to shoot itself in the foot by telling them to develop for OS/2, which was "going to replace Windows". Then they dumped OS/2 after version 1.1, to concentrate on Windows -- which their own applications group had known all along would happen.

Also boosting the MS offerings was their use of operating system calls that were only documented inside Microsoft, to make their own applications launch faster and run more smoothly than anyone else's.

As to writing papers in MS-Word: if you don't mind long files with complex formatting causing file corruption and program crashes, if you don't mind an interface inimical to careful editing (not to mention critical thinking -- don't get me started on PowerPoint!), if you don't care that two or three application versions later you may not be able to open the file and if you can it certainly won't look the same on screen or paper, and if you don't care that everyone you collaborate with had better have the same version of the program that you have running on the same version of the same OS, then by all means use MS-Word.

Most of the folks we have hired for the past decade have told us they want to use TeX for formatting and printing, especially for scientific papers, and they can use any text editor they like on any computer they like, knowing that ten or thirty years from now the printout will look EXACTLY the same.

Pfui.

[ioshk...@gmail.com]

The Microsoft whammy on text editing can be seen in its full glory on the editors of smartphones, tablets and phablets. 

Sent from my iPad

--

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 7:46 PM, <ioshk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The Microsoft whammy on text editing can be seen in its full glory on the
> editors of smartphones, tablets and phablets.
>
> Sent from my iPad

Depends on what you use for your editor.

I have a couple of Android tablets. For honest-to-gosh *text*
editing, I have a couple of different text editors: an open source
effort called 920 Editor, and a freeware with payware upgrade
available closed source effort called DroidEdit. There are an
assortment of others, including Android ports of Vim and even Gnu
Emacs.

It's even possible to use WordStar, using an Android port of DOSBox,
but not easy: DOSBox does not by default pass through Ctrl-key combos
to apps. You must modify the DOSBox keymap.cf file to get it to
recognize them, and that lives in a system directory and requires a
rooted device to diddle. My devices are rooted, but I haven't found
the proper mods to make to the cf file, so while I have a couple of
old DOS apps up on one tablet, VDE isn't one of them.

For dealing with MS Office files, I use a freeware Chinese package
called WPS Office, which seems to have the best functionality. MS has
free Android versions of Word and Excel available, but they're huge
and require a fast device with a gig of RAM to really use. I mostly
use WPS to *view* MS Office files. They aren't something I'd try to
create on a tablet. And anything I do use needs to support an
external keyboard. On screen virtual KBs are actively painful for any
extended text entry.
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Mark P. Fishman]

Textmaker is now free for Android, with a paid upgrade to their "Pro" version. It is smaller than Microsoft Word, and does an excellent job of reading or producing docx files. It can use an external keyboard.

On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 8:32 PM, dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:

For dealing with MS Office files, I use a freeware Chinese package
called WPS Office, which seems to have the best functionality.  MS has
free Android versions of Word and Excel available, but they're huge
and require a fast device with a gig of RAM to really use.  I mostly
use WPS to *view* MS Office files.  They aren't something I'd try to
create on a tablet.  And anything I do use needs to support  an
external keyboard.  On screen virtual KBs are actively painful for any
extended text entry.

[GMAIL]

The text editing situation in Android is tragic compared to iPad. Period, full stop, end of the story. Comparable to Germany beating Brazil 8 to 1 in the World Cup.

Attaching an external keyboard to a flat screen device is like spreading a tablecloth to eat a Ritz cracker. Fine, but always remember that you're not just attaching a keyboard, but also a chair and a table.... killing the mobility of mobile devices.

The reason that text editing stinks on flatscreens, is the Microsoft Word Whammy... which is philosophically WRONG.

The problem is not the virtual keyboard, but the need for highlighting for forward deletions.

Pudgy fingers rising from the keyboard to maneuver tiny handles. So clunky... so needlessly awkward!!!

To kill a single word in WordStar or VDE?

<CTRL-T>

Today's flatscreens (with octo-core processors)?

4 taps.

Tap-tap to highlight the doomed word.
Backspace to cancel
Another backspace to micro-correct the resultant double space.

Funny how - thanks to the Microsoft whammy, we are forced to lavish the same amount of painstaking attention on words we wish only to eliminate as those we wish to somehow "prettify" (format).

It worked fine on a big whopping keyboard... but this editing philosophy is so wrong for flastscreens that a whole new and terrifically silly and unnecessary industry was born: external keyboards!

Pfui!!!

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: vde_e...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vde_e...@googlegroups.com] Per conto di dmccunney
Inviato: lunedì 9 novembre 2015 02:33
A: VDE_Editor <vde_e...@googlegroups.com>
Oggetto: Re: [VDE] Interest in new release of MFD utilities?

[dmccunney]

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 1:52 PM, GMAIL <ioshk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The text editing situation in Android is tragic compared to iPad. Period, full stop, end of the story. Comparable to Germany beating Brazil 8 to 1 in the World Cup.

I don't own an iPad have have no direct knowledge of the state of the
art on that device.

> Attaching an external keyboard to a flat screen device is like spreading a tablecloth to eat a Ritz cracker. Fine, but always remember that you're not just attaching a keyboard, but also a chair and a
table.... killing the mobility of mobile devices.

Er, no. If I plug in an external keyboard, it's because I need to do
*extended* text entry. I'm not *on* the go when I do it. I'm seated
in a chair, at a table. The mobility of the device is a matter of
form factor. The Android tablet and external keyboard I use are a
*lot* smaller, lighter, and more easily easily carried than a laptop I
might otherwise use. Size and weight when carrying things around are
the key factors. I am extremely unlikely to actually *use* a tablet
while *in* transit, save as an eBook viewer while strap hanging.
That's a one handed operation with no text entry involved.

Extended text entry using an onscreen virtual keyboard is actively
painful on any flat screen device I've seen. And while smartphones
may have integrated thumb boards, "Crackberry thumb" has never been
attractive to me. I used to use a Palm PDA (and still have a working
one). Palm's Grafitti handwriting recognition software was notable,
but was useful mainly for in a pinch entry of small amounts of text.
I have a portable folding external KB for the PDA, too.

>> The reason that text editing stinks on flatscreens, is the Microsoft Word Whammy... which is philosophically WRONG.
>
> The problem is not the virtual keyboard, but the need for highlighting for forward deletions.
>
> Pudgy fingers rising from the keyboard to maneuver tiny handles. So clunky... so needlessly awkward!!!
>
> To kill a single word in WordStar or VDE?
>
> <CTRL-T>

And you enter the Ctrl-T how, exactly on a touch screen device?

> Today's flatscreens (with octo-core processors)?
>
> 4 taps.
>
> Tap-tap to highlight the doomed word.
> Backspace to cancel
> Another backspace to micro-correct the resultant double space.

Depends on the software you use, I think.

> Funny how - thanks to the Microsoft whammy, we are forced to lavish the same amount of painstaking attention on words we wish only to eliminate as those we wish to somehow "prettify" (format).
>

> It worked fine on a big whopping keyboard... but this editing philosophy is so wrong for flatscreens that a whole new and terrifically silly and unnecessary industry was born: external keyboards!
>
> Pfui!!!

Agreed, but I don't blame Microsoft for it. I would need more than a
single tap to delete word to make using an onscreen KB palatable. The
issue isn't deleting a word, it's getting a number of words input in
the first place. In my use cases, I am *creating* text, not editing
existing documents.

Tell me how you do that on an iPad so doing it *doesn't* suck?
______
Dennis

[GMAIL]

Ciao Dennis,

Of course for touch typing no flatscreen thumbing is gonna compete. But a flatscreen 7/8" can compete with a two finger keyboard typist - once you get the hang of it.

In any case you are fine with losing the mobility of your mobile device so you need to compare your productivity to a notebook... because that is what you've harnessed your device to be (or pretend to be).

Me... I compared my flatscreen productivity to my previous levels using the clamshells of the 90's... especially the HP200LX armed with VDE... while walking through the local park, waiting on line at the supermarket, stuck in a traffic jam, slouched on a couch.

In my case, being a translator, I needed editing power (lots of forward deletions). When the flatscreen devices came out, I went the way of Android and my "al fresco" productivity plunged. It felt like the scribes had been punished.

VDE had macros and so my dinosaur DOS pocket gadget could run circles around any modern device.

I never had to highlight to delete and I only used one and the same button to cancel everything. Word for Word (also machine gun style), paragraph for paragraph (also machine gun style), from anywhere within a paragraph to the end of the same (always never more than two finger taps) . Up to all the punctuation marks, numbers, symbols, characters etc.

Bim-bam-boom whereas on the HTC Flyer and Samsung and Lenovo... it was (and still is): "place thine pudgy finger upon yon screen and have tired eye drag the forward highlighting until everything is just right to hit BackSpace."

After writing to the TextMaker people in Nuremberg Germany and Jiri of Japan (Jota Plus) begging them to come up with something better for folks who write / edit more than tweets and whatsapps, I gave up on Android and tried my wife's iPad. The iTunes store was full of way better programs for editing than those available in the Android family. iA Writer, Nebulous Notes, TextKraft Pro, etc. etc. - way better.

They still stank compared to VDE on HP200LX, but at least I could work.

Then at last I had TextKraft Pro (Infovole) of Neuss Germany implement something similar to my one button editor macro for VDE... So, not only were the iOS folks way ahead to start with, but unlike the Android folks, the programmers listen to cranks like me. It's a livelier atmosphere.

A lot of work still needs to be done, also at the hardware level... but that's another story.

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: vde_e...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vde_e...@googlegroups.com] Per conto di dmccunney

Inviato: lunedì 9 novembre 2015 20:34

A: VDE_Editor <vde_e...@googlegroups.com>
Oggetto: Re: [VDE] Interest in new release of MFD utilities?

[dmccunney]

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 5:35 PM, GMAIL <ioshk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Of course for touch typing no flatscreen thumbing is gonna compete. But a flatscreen 7/8" can compete with a two finger keyboard typist - once you get the hang of it.

I can't be bothered to *get* the hang of it. If I have that much text
*entry* to do, a real keyboard is required. Virtual onscreen KBs are
fine for the sorts of things you normally do on a tablet. A friend
called his iPad a "media consumption device", and was spot on. The UI
is optimized for that usage, and in use the device is largely
half-duplex, and you receive *far* more than you send. The UI is
optimized to selecting the media you want to consume.

> In any case you are fine with losing the mobility of your mobile device so you need to compare your productivity to a notebook... because that is what you've harnessed your device to be (or pretend to be).

Huh? I think we need to define what we mean by "mobility".

In my case, mobility is the ease of carrying it around with me. I may
use my cell phone while actually in motion. I will not use my tablet
that way.

The tablet gets the nod over a notebook for being smaller and lighter,
and easier to transport.

> Me... I compared my flatscreen productivity to my previous levels using the clamshells of the 90's... especially the HP200LX armed with VDE... while walking through the local park, waiting on line at the supermarket, stuck in a traffic jam, slouched on a couch.

I use my tablet while at rest. I don't use it walking around. If I
am actually in motion under my own power, I have other things to look
at an pay attention to. (I am not one of the numerous folks walking
down the street staring at their phone, and I once saw a guy fall flat
on his face stepping off a curb because he was so focused on his phone
he wasn't aware he *was* stepping off a curb.)

I *do* occasionally use my tablet while strap hanging on a subway, or
standing in line at a supermarket. But that's a one-handed media
consumption operation. I'm reading an eBook. I am *not* trying to do
text entry/editing. That happens when I'm sitting down and can use a
keyboard.

> In my case, being a translator, I needed editing power (lots of forward deletions). When the flatscreen devices came out, I went the way of Android and my "al fresco" productivity plunged. It felt like the scribes had been punished.

I understand your concern. You wanted to do actual work that required
it. So do I, but I *don't* try to *do* that sort of work in the
circumstances you mention.

> VDE had macros and so my dinosaur DOS pocket gadget could run circles around any modern device.
>
> I never had to highlight to delete and I only used one and the same button to cancel everything. Word for Word (also machine gun style), paragraph for paragraph (also machine gun style), from anywhere within a paragraph to the end of the same (always never more than two finger taps) . Up to all the punctuation marks, numbers, symbols, characters etc.

There are reasons VDE was splendid.

> Bim-bam-boom whereas on the HTC Flyer and Samsung and Lenovo... it was (and still is): "place thine pudgy finger upon yon screen and have tired eye drag the forward highlighting until everything is just right to hit BackSpace."
>
> After writing to the TextMaker people in Nuremberg Germany and Jiri of Japan (Jota Plus) begging them to come up with something better for folks who write / edit more than tweets and whatsapps, I gave up on Android and tried my wife's iPad. The iTunes store was full of way better programs for editing than those available in the Android family. iA Writer, Nebulous Notes, TextKraft Pro, etc. etc. - way better.
>
> They still stank compared to VDE on HP200LX, but at least I could work.

> Then at last I had TextKraft Pro (Infovole) of Neuss Germany implement something similar to my one button editor macro for VDE... So, not only were the iOS folks way ahead to start with, but unlike the Android folks, the programmers listen to cranks like me. It's a livelier atmosphere.
>
> A lot of work still needs to be done, also at the hardware level... but that's another story.

If you have something that more or less meets your needs, I'm pleased.
But you are in a very tiny minority. The sort of stuff you wanted to
see hasn't occurred because the vast majority of users simply don't
need to do that. (Most tablet users don't need text editing features,
period, and those installing programs to deal with things like Word
documents and Excel spreadsheets are likely to be primarily *viewing*
them. Editing will be minimal, and creation won't occur.)

I found solutions that let me do what I required on Android tablets if
I plugged in a keyboard, and that was fine because I would only be
doing it in circumstances where I *could* sit down and plug in a
keyboard.

And what you describe is needing a lot of power in text *editing*. My
need was text *entry*. I am *creating* text on my device, and the sort
of power editing you need to do is far less of a concern.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> A friend called his iPad a "media consumption device",

Spot on, indeed. That also describes 90% of the apps I had to disable (but of
course couldn't delete) on my phone. Now this mindset is even adversely
affecting the design of websites and software for real PCs. What a contrast
with what I always took the purpose of a personal computer to be. And how far
are we from being regarded as mere "consumption devices" ourselves?

> And what you describe is needing a lot of power in text *editing*. My
> need was text *entry*. I am *creating* text on my device, and the sort
> of power editing you need to do is far less of a concern.

Funny, I don't draw such a distinction myself. Editing is very much part of
the creation of text for me.

-- Eric.

[GMAIL]

Ciao again,

By mobility I particularly mean spur of the moment: IOW quickly out of the pocket, instant on and decent productivity... at the café, in the car while waiting for the daughters to get out of school, while waiting for my number at the post office. And yes, ALSO while walking and working in the park (where there is little danger of being a zombie).

I used to work a lot on movie sets as dialogue coach (now less so)... so mobility meant standing around waiting for the actors to get out of hair and makeup or the sets to be changed (the motto of the industry being "hurry up and wait").

I get italian movie scripts to translate and they are approx.. 20K words that need to be pumped out in a week (as the industry is in a state of perennial emergency).

So I need productivity.

And I got along fine with the gadgets of the 90's... The little HP armed with VDE I mentioned and then the glorious Psion 5MX. Hundreds of scripts were done on them... Then using my own little markup language I'd get them formatted and Final Draft ready in under 4 minutes.

But then all those gadgets died and were replaced by "media consumption" flat screen devices. So what was once fast, easy and productive for me... NO LONGER EXISTED except for the half-dead (pre-owned) stuff on ebay.

Unlike the gadgets of the 90's, the new fit-in-your pocket devices were indeed all about "media consumption" because they were for Mass Consumption. And in that mass of mass consumers, scribes like me are just a niche.

And so the scribes were forgotten and editing became hell. The focus shifted from productivity to GAMES and Games and games (Go to any of the online stores - iTunes, Microsoft. Google and one's first impression is that of entering the Cartoon Network), plus messaging and browsing and socials, and photography and filming, and navigation...

Great great stuff! Everybody but the scribes was richly rewarded.

And yet for all the phablet and tablet families there are dozens of editing / word processing programs. Some even offered by the biggies. Google, Microsoft, KingSoft, SoftMaker... extremely rich, full of bells and whistles, but with their editing still geared for tweets and whatsapps.

Need to work? Get an external keyboard!

Well that simply doesn't have to be. In fact, with a little imagination, in terms of raw text editing, a phablet and tablet can be made to out-perform a desktop PC running Word.

My reaction to the virtual keyboards was instant refusal, but now I'm thumbing away faster than the 90's. So if you can't be bothered, I understand... I felt that way too and kept on ordering the old clamshells.

No, the real deterrent was the tweets and whatsapp editing, not the inputting. In fact, the touch is now so light and airy that my thumbs don't get sore anymore.

So I, a non-programmer came up with two solutions. One I've managed to get partially implemented (iOS) and another I'm trying to draw attention to: retro-tapping.

Flip your STP (smartphone, tablet, phablet) over and you'll see what? A camera, maybe a speaker and then a huge piece of potentially precious real estate, that's presently just a battery cover.

Civilize it! Two sensors, a big left and a big right and you can have 6 commands (with single and double taps).

With my VDE style editing macro and retro-tapping... all the "creative" work could be done on top (just keyboard and screen) and all the editing on the bottom.

And writing / editing would attain the feel of playing a musical instrument.

I'm working on it...

Ciao, gotta work... a script about a stateless Lithuanian...

So it's gonna be Leni's caffè, a cappuccino, brioche, the iPad with the partial implementation of a VDE inspired macro... and the word "AND"...

"media consumption device" **AND** text editor.

AND... 'cause there ain't nuthin' else a guy can whip out of his pocket and work on these days...

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: vde_e...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vde_e...@googlegroups.com] Per conto di dmccunney

Inviato: giovedì 12 novembre 2015 04:27

A: VDE_Editor <vde_e...@googlegroups.com>
Oggetto: Re: [VDE] Interest in new release of MFD utilities?

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 12:58 AM, Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> dmccunney wrote:
>>
>> A friend called his iPad a "media consumption device",
>
> Spot on, indeed. That also describes 90% of the apps I had to disable (but
> of course couldn't delete) on my phone.

Deleting that sort of thing is a reason why you root devices. There
were several vendor supplied apps on my tablets I didn't need/want,
and went away post rooting. App storage space if finite, and I had
other uses for the space those occupied.

(Far that matter, rooting let me move apps to an external microSD
card. This required the card to be re-partitioned to carve out a
slice with a Linux file system to hold the apps and a couple of other
tweaks, and a rooted device was necessary to be *able* to do it. If
you know what you're doing, it's not hard.)

> Now this mindset is even adversely
> affecting the design of websites and software for real PCs. What a contrast
> with what I always took the purpose of a personal computer to be.

Websites and PCs are separate issues. Websites really need to adapt
to what the use will view them with, and that's increasingly a mobile
device. The challenge for the site designed is getting it to adapt,
which requires figuring out what the accessing device is, and having a
design scheme that *can* adapt. The BBS posted a design document on
what they came up with that impressed me.

> And how far are we from being regarded as mere "consumption devices" ourselves?

We already are.

>> And what you describe is needing a lot of power in text *editing*. My
>> need was text *entry*. I am *creating* text on my device, and the sort
>> of power editing you need to do is far less of a concern.
>
> Funny, I don't draw such a distinction myself. Editing is very much part of
> the creation of text for me.

The distinction I draw is based on where the file came from in the
first place. The usual assumption in tablet apps is that you will be
modifying a file actually created elsewhere.

You have a file you want to create that will contain X thousands of
words. How do you get that text into the file in the first place?
Odds are, you *don't* try to do it with a virtual onscreen keyboard on
a flat screen device

Ioshka2007 might do so. I refuse to even try. That sort of thing is
what external keyboards are for.

> -- Eric.
______
Dennis

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 2:05 PM, dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:

> The challenge for the site designed is getting it to adapt,
> which requires figuring out what the accessing device is, and having a
> design scheme that *can* adapt. The BBS posted a design document on
> what they came up with that impressed me.

*sigh*

s/The BBS posted/The BBC posted/

______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[Derek Frost]

regarding what Denns said about dosbox. i paid 99p for a 'dosbox pro' about a year ago - cntrl characters worked fine. but since then i had to do a factory reset and i can't get back what i had. turbo dbx is more exp and i'm not sure if that was it, or exactly what mine was called. i refuse to pay 3 euros again.. so alas i no longer have cntrl characters. someone mentioned rexx. i'm not good at programming but i love tinkering with prehistoric interpreters, rexx scheme and sb-prolog..

[dmccunney]

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 10:44 AM, Derek Frost <derek...@gmail.com> wrote:
> regarding what Denns said about dosbox. i paid 99p for a 'dosbox pro' about a year ago - cntrl characters worked fine. but since then i had to do a factory reset and i can't get back what i had. turbo dbx is more exp and i'm not sure if that was it, or exactly what mine was called. i refuse to pay 3 euros again.. so alas i no longer have cntrl characters.

I understand you can get Ctrl chars recognized in an Android port of
DOSBox by diddling the keyboard.conf file. A former user on the
WordStar mailing list reported successfully getting a version of
WordStar running on Android via DOSBox by doing so, but didn't detail
just what he did, and is no longer on the list.

Even if you know what tweaks to make, the file you need to edit
resides in a system directory, and you need a rooted device to get to
it and change it. I looked a bit a while back, since my device is
rooted, but got distracted and never really got it to work.

> someone mentioned rexx. i'm not good at programming but i love tinkering with prehistoric interpreters, rexx scheme and sb-prolog..

REXX is available for Android. So are Perl and Lua.

The Windows editor I'm poking at currently is Mitchell Foicica's
TextAdept. It's intended to be small and highly extensible. The
editor framework is under 2,000 lines of C code, and uses Neil
Hodgson's Scintilla edit control, which enables code foolding and
syntax highlighting. IT uses Lua for the script language, and the
editing functions are written in about 4,000 lines of Lua code. You
can get to the Lua code from within TextAdept and change it while
running. See http://foicica.com/textadept/
______
Dennis