VDE 1.97 released

[Eric Meyer]

VDE 1.97 is now available for downloading at the top of this page:

https://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/Home/vde-files

Comments welcome. Please feel free to contribute it to your favorite DOS
software sites.


NEW IN VDE 1.97

* The ^PgDn,^PgUp keys will now cross a segment boundary in large files
when the cursor is at the end or beginning of a segment. (Previously this
would have required AltN,^Home or AltB,^End.) Also, blank space at the end
of a non-final segment now displays in a different color, to distinguish it
visually from the actual end of the file.

* A new command Esc*g can defeat the adaptive feature of VDE's auto-
formatting, reverting to the simpler autoformat behavior (fixed margins etc)
of versions prior to 1.95. See AUTOFORMAT.

* VDE now automatically recognizes UTF-8 or -16 files with a Byte Order
Mark (as created now by Notepad) as mode /T, and writes a BOM again when
saving (though it writes only UTF-8, not 16). See FILE MODES.

* Under vDOSplus, the mouse wheel can now be used to scroll text in VDE
at a nice rate if WHEELMOD=6 is set in CONFIG. Glitches involving filenames
and dates in vDOSplus have been addressed. See DOS EMULATORS.

* Small improvements have been made over time to many commands and
displays. Keys that conflicted with Windows (^Esc, @Tab) have finally been
removed, along with DESQview support. Documentation has been revised to
cover increasing use of DOS emulators in 64-bit Windows (see BEYOND DOS).

[Eric Meyer]

I wrote:
> Please feel free to contribute it to your favorite DOS software sites.

Of course that was a joke. Most are no longer online, and those still
accessible were archived over a decade ago. (Let me know of any exception!)
The DOS clone/emulator folks talk about "enabling continued development of DOS
software", but I don't see or expect any in actual applications.

Incidentally, John found two small editing glitches in VDE.TXT, so I updated
the VDE197.ZIP file yesterday. You can download again if you want the
corrections.

[Eric Meyer]

I gather by now that 1.97 must be working well in whatever DOS emulations
everyone is using.

I'm quite sure that a way to turn off the new auto-formatting was requested by
someone on the list, longer ago than I like to think. Do let me know if
you're still here and it meets your need.

-- Eric.

[Mark P. Fishman]

Eric, the only reference to this that I have in my mail archive is from a message you posted on Nov 8, 2009 in which you wrote:

" Since the introduction of the new autoformat mode (with adaptive margins) in

VDE195, I've received a couple of requests for a way to temporarily circumvent
it -- either offering the "old" AF mode as an alternative option, or a way to
"lock" the margins during AF (which amounts to the same thing).  I actually
have seen AF produce margins I don't want, but this happens very seldom, and
is easily corrected by hitting one of my margin F-keys.
 "       So the question is: why would adding this (back) be worth the complication or
confusion potentially involved?  Can anyone who favors this describe
situations where it would be a benefit?"

Other than Gary Welles suggesting maybe more documentation of the new behavior, I don't see any on-list responses.

--

"While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats."

   -- Mark Twain

[Roger Stott]

Thanks for the update Eric.

I got it a bit late as ithe emails ended up in my Spam folder.

Negotiating the End of segment in a neater manner is a plus.

Vde is still the most predictable when working with rectangular blocks.
The next most predictable editor for this is PsPad.

I use Vde under vDos Plus on Win 7 (64bit).

Thanks for the contact.

Roger Stott
Hobart TAS /au


Thanks for the

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[Eric Meyer]

Roger Stott wrote:
> Vde is still the most predictable when working with rectangular blocks.

Glad to hear that. Column block operations are tricky. I always wondered
whether they should trim lines left ending in a series of spaces, but never
decided to...

[Leo Chen]

Hi Eric

I am a new user and I really like the simple UI of VDE. Could you please add some instructions on how to install dictionary files and where can I find dictionary files? (I have wordstar 4.0 dictionary files and I wonder if I can use that) 

I am also having trouble making wordfinder work with VDE. I set the hotkey to Alt+=. The hotkey works in WordStart 4.0. However, VDE doesn't show the word finder window when I pressed Alt+=. 

Thank you.

[Eric Meyer]

Hi Leo,

1. The integrated spell checker was by Microlytics, so it's possible that a
file from some other product of theirs could work, if(!) the internal format
was the same. WordStar may also have licensed from them, I don't recall, so
you could try it. There must be a single file (including code as well as
dictionary) renamed to VDESPELL.OVR for VDE to see and try to use it.

2. Alt= is not a VDE hotkey so if you're unable to use it, the problem is
likely in your DOS emulator which you don't specify (vDOS etc). These
typically do intercept keys in ways that can conflict with other software.
Does this work with other DOS programs like WS but not VDE?

-- Eric.

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[Leo Chen]

Hi Eric

Thanks for helping me. 

1. The integrated spell checker was by Microlytics, so it's possible that a
file from some other product of theirs could work, if(!) the internal format
was the same. WordStar may also have licensed from them, I don't recall, so
you could try it. There must be a single file (including code as well as
dictionary) renamed to VDESPELL.OVR for VDE to see and try to use it. 

I tried to rename WordStar dictionary file MAIN.DIC to VDESPELL.OVR and put it in the same folder as VDE. It didn't work.

Where can I find a copy to Microlytics spell checker?

2. Alt= is not a VDE hotkey so if you're unable to use it, the problem is
likely in your DOS emulator which you don't specify (vDOS etc). These
typically do intercept keys in ways that can conflict with other software.
Does this work with other DOS programs like WS but not VDE?

It works for WS but doesn't work for VDE. I still prefer to a native spell checker if I can figure out how to set it up properly.

[Leo Chen]

I manage to find Microlytics dictionaries here. However, I couldn't find the speller program anywhere. 
http://www.xywrite.com/dics/index.htm

Is it possible to put the speller on the VDE site for people to download?

[Eric Meyer]

Leo Chen wrote:
> Is it possible to put the speller on the VDE site for people to download?

No, my license to distribute it wouldn't have permitted that (as I stated in
VDE.TXT). And believe it or not, there still seems to be a software company
called Microlytics, so this may not even be available on "abandonware"
websites, though you could check, or even contact the company for further
information. The product was called SpellFinder 7.5.

I'm sorry to hear that the Wordfinder hotkey works (under whatever emulator
you're using?) in WordStar but not VDE. I doubt that I'd be able to fix that.

-- Eric.

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 4:46 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Leo Chen wrote:
> > Is it possible to put the speller on the VDE site for people to download?
>
> No, my license to distribute it wouldn't have permitted that (as I stated in
> VDE.TXT). And believe it or not, there still seems to be a software company
> called Microlytics, so this may not even be available on "abandonware"
> websites, though you could check, or even contact the company for further
> information. The product was called SpellFinder 7.5.

The current software company called Microlytics provides analytic
solutions, with an emphasis on healthcare, though they serve other
industries as well. I very much doubt they are the same company that
developed SpellFinder. (Among other things, the current company is
based in Florida. The earlier one was in Rochester, NY.),

Even if they are, it may still be possible to find the program on an
abandonware site. I rather doubt Microlytics (if the current company
*is* a descendant of the one that wrote SpellFinder) actually cares if
it can be found there. Companies usually care if the product still
has value (like, people will still *buy* it), or they see important
property rights being damaged. (Things like copyright and trademarks
are civil law, ans it's on the rights holder to look for and take
action against infringers. Fail to do so and you can lose rights.)

> -- Eric.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> I rather doubt Microlytics (if the current company
> *is* a descendant of the one that wrote SpellFinder) actually cares if
> it can be found there.

So do I, but can't be certain. I'd actually be glad to learn that SpellFinder
was on some abandonware site, and we could just direct VDE users there. But
SF probably was never sold as a standalone product at all. A quick search
turned up only one hit, for a shareware word processor called Galaxy that also
offered SF only as a registration bonus, so it's not in GALAXY.ZIP either.
And that might not help anyway. For what it's worth, my copy of WordStar 4
has the following files of interest:
WSSPELL.OVR 23k
INTERNAL.DCT 25k
MAIN.DCT 271k
while the VDE speller package has:
VDESPELL.OVR 44k
VDESP-US.DIC 132k
I could easily suspect that the WS dictionary is exactly twice as big due to
including both US and UK, which are separate files for VDE. But I just tried
renaming WS files for use with VDE and it didn't work, so if that's really SF
there were different ways to set up and integrate it, and it's unlikely that
another program's would pop in and work with VDE.

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

Eric Meyer wrote:
> But I just tried
> renaming WS files for use with VDE and it didn't work, so if that's really SF
> there were different ways to set up and integrate it, and it's unlikely that
> another program's would pop in and work with VDE.

Duh, I should have examined WSSPELL.OVR first. It just says "CorrectStar 14
Feb 87 Copyright MicroPro Int'l", so no that isn't SpellFinder. But it's
still doubtful whether another version of SF (I think XyWrite did use it)
would work with VDE.

[Eric Meyer]

Eric Meyer wrote:
> But it's
> still doubtful whether another version of SF (I think XyWrite did use it)
> would work with VDE.

Apparently XyWrite did use SpellFinder. I couldn't easily find the speller
overlay as a separate file to test, but on xywrite.com I saw a large
assortment of foreign-language dictionaries that I'll bet could be renamed and
used with VDE if one wanted to.

[Mark P. Fishman]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 1:37 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Leo,

1.  The integrated spell checker was by Microlytics, so it's possible that a
file from some other product of theirs could work, if(!) the internal format
was the same.  WordStar may also have licensed from them, I don't recall, so
you could try it.  There must be a single file (including code as well as
dictionary) renamed to VDESPELL.OVR for VDE to see and try to use it.

Eric,

I looked up my registered copy of VDE 1.86A, which I had archived to a CD-R with a bunch of other text-editor stuff. This is the directory listing (also archived in a text file) from the original floppy:

 Volume in drive A is EM-DISK3-02
 Volume Serial Number is 1926-13CB

Directory of A:\

OTHER        <DIR>         10-25-92   1:06p
INSTALL  COM         5,925 11-05-97   3:07p
UNZIP    COM         4,539 03-25-93   2:25p
CTRLCAPS ZIP         2,653 06-01-96  10:13a
EKB102   ZIP         3,655 06-01-96  10:14a
FIXCAPS  ZIP         2,595 06-01-96  10:17a
VDE186A  ZIP       173,937 06-30-98   9:15p
EQKRP    ZIP         1,807 06-01-96  10:15a
ZIP212   ZIP        51,326 04-15-98  10:24a
FONTHT   ZIP         7,954 06-01-96  10:16a
LQCHAR   ZIP        21,634 06-01-96  10:20a
LXFONT   ZIP         5,785 06-01-96  10:37a
MFD111   ZIP        53,306 09-07-97   9:52p
PINT13   ZIP         6,579 06-01-96  10:42a
TFONT3   ZIP         7,110 06-01-96  10:48a
QKRP     ZIP         3,042 06-01-96  10:46a
NOLOCK   ZIP           965 06-01-96  10:40a
@            <DIR>         11-03-93  12:04a
COLAP121 ZIP         6,117 06-01-96  10:09a
WSNOTE   ZIP        30,031 06-01-96  10:53a
LXSHIFT  ZIP         4,113 06-01-96  10:40a
       21 file(s)        393,073 bytes

Directory of A:\OTHER

.            <DIR>         10-25-92   1:06p
..           <DIR>         10-25-92   1:06p
ASERCTL  ZIP         3,059 11-03-97  10:18a
DMP      ZIP        55,217 06-06-93   1:43p
KBDFIX   ZIP        10,110 09-14-91  12:20a
P4UP     ZIP        31,705 05-04-92  11:25a
VDE-BC   ZIP         7,234 02-14-92   9:20p
VDE-EXM  ZIP         2,053 06-01-96  10:58a
VDE-MC   ZIP        36,864 11-21-95  10:22a
VDE-WP   ZIP        10,200 02-14-92   9:58p
VDE-ICN  ZIP         1,335 01-01-97   5:37p
       11 file(s)        157,777 bytes

Total files listed:
       32 file(s)        550,850 bytes
                           5,120 bytes free

Volume EM-DISK3-02 created 06-30-1993 1:38a
Volume Serial Number is 1926-13CB

      730,112 bytes total disk space
        2,048 bytes in 2 directories
      722,944 bytes in 29 user files
        5,120 bytes available on disk

The directory named '@' contains one file, also named '@', which when opened with 7zip turns out to be a zip archive that contains four (4) files for the speller:

VDESPELL.OVR (44,272 bytes)

VDESP-US.DIC (135,088 bytes)

VUDIC.COM (2,345 bytes)
VDESPELL.DOC (12,297 bytes)

So I am questioning your comment (quoted above) that there's a single file containing both code and dictionary.

[dmccunney]

I saw those. They are strictly a variety of dictionary files in
various languages. I believe you would need the SpellFinder
executable to make use of them.

I used XyWrite a bit back when. (I was, and am, interested in text
editors and tried everything I got my hands on.) It actually derived
from a product called Atex, popular as a typesetting system in
newspapers back when. The lead developer of XyWrite had been a
principal developer for Atex. Interesting chap - he developed XyWrite
in assembler on a genuine IBM PC well after things like 25mhz AT
clones were prominent. That was deliberate. If he could get
acceptable performance on an original 4.zz mhz PC, it would *fly* on
faster things.

XyWrte made an ill advised alliance with IBM that essentially killed
parent company XyQuest. But what was an OEM version of XyWrite called
Nota Bene, aimed at the scholarly market, still exists in a Windows
version, the former XyWrite guy develops for it,and is an investor in
the company that produces it.

I described XyWrite back when as a programming language intended for
dealing with text, wrapped in a word processor disguise. If you were
fluent in XBL there was little you couldn't get it to do. I met a guy
back when using it in a corporate context.at a securities firm. The
stock analysts would download real time market data from Tandem "Non
Stop" mainframe systems and import it into Lotus 123 for analysis, and
use XyWrite to write the commentary they made on what their modelling
revealed. My guy was able to implement a Lotus 123 style menu bar
interface in XyWrite's Help system, to wrap the functionality and
make it all appear to be one product instead of a glued together
collection of other programs. I was *impressed*..

One reason why Nota Bene still exists is the UI. You could make
XyWrite do just about anything, but first you had to learn to
configure it. Nota Bene was a lot more usable "out of the box". You
could still configure it into a Mobius pretzel if desired, but you
didn't have to to be able to use it at all.

In that respect, XyWrite reminds me of Gnu Emacs. Emacs is
essentially an interpreter for a flavor of the Lisp language, and most
of Emacs is written in the flavor of Lisp it interprets. List is
intended for string processing, and a good fit for the usage. But Gnu
Emacs requires a fair bit of configuration to be usable, and learning
to do that is non-trivial. (I did manage to get Emacs to use WordStar
keystrokes to avoid retraining my fingers.)

I believe I still have a XyWrite distribution archive around. I'll
have to see if SpellFinder is included.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

Mark P. Fishman wrote:
> So I am questioning your comment (quoted above) that there's a single file
> containing both code and dictionary.

Good catch, thanks. I really hadn't looked at any of this for a very long
time. The SF code overlay and dictionary are indeed two separate files (and a
user dictionary would be a third). There may still be implementation
differences that would keep XyWrite's overlay (if you could find it? I don't
see it on that site) from working with VDE.

This also relates to what I said about XyWrite's foreign language
dictionaries. Yes Dennis, you would need to have VDE's speller overlay to use
them, as most subscribers to this list did. Now I'm getting curious enough
(at least about the German one) to go try this myself.

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

I had no idea Nota Bene was still maintained, as WordPerfect is. Or that
XW/NB were so configurable; that's not what I recall people giving as a reason
for using them. This reminds me of Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird, whose
interface and presentation of material is highly configurable if you learn css.

-- Eric.

[Mark P. Fishman]

Not that it needs saying :^) but as VDE seems to look for only files named VDESP-U?.DIC and USER.DIC, you'll want to rename the German dictionary file to even have a hope pof it working.

On Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 3:35 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

Good catch, thanks.  I really hadn't looked at any of this for a very long
time.  The SF code overlay and dictionary are indeed two separate files (and a
user dictionary would be a third).  There may still be implementation
differences that would keep XyWrite's overlay (if you could find it? I don't
see it on that site) from working with VDE.

This also relates to what I said about XyWrite's foreign language
dictionaries.  Yes Dennis, you would need to have VDE's speller overlay to use
them, as most subscribers to this list did.  Now I'm getting curious enough
(at least about the German one) to go try this myself.

        --  Eric.

 

[Mark P. Fishman]

I dug out my 3.5" floppies for XyWrite 4 (apparently not the last update, but close enough to be relatively useless), and I would have to actually install the darn thing to see any of the individual files: the installation diskettes each have a single file (.001, .002, etc.) that is probably a split ZIP archive or similar. I'm not going to do that.

However, there does seem to be a complete set of individual files on the xywrite.com site (despite some of the links to the old The Technology Group [TTG] web pages being broken) and I am getting the feeling that the code for using the dictionaries is actually incorporated into the EDITOR.EXE main executable file. There's a WORD.OVR, which seems to be from a different company -- Selfware -- and may be for the synonym files.

If I have a copy of XyWrite III (or III+) around here, it's hidden. Ditto for my ancient copy of Signature (yeah, I got snookered, same as the XyWrite folks did).

One of the "selling points" for XyWrite used to be that it was fast, as well as flexible. Minimizing the amount of disk activity would have made it faster, so it's plausible for the spelling code to have been in the main executable. Remember, we're talking XT-type hard disks and floppies, not 6MB/s SATA drives.

[dmccunney]

On Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 3:44 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I had no idea Nota Bene was still maintained, as WordPerfect is. Or that

Well, "maintained" is relative.

WordPerfect shot itself in both feet by waiting too long to develop a
Windows port, and MS Word essentially ate it for lunch. Corel bought
the WordPerfect Windows version, and still sells it, but as near as I
can tell, they are essentially still serving the existing WordPerfect
market that didn't want to switch. I don't think *new* sales are much
of a factor.

I saw a lot of that. Back in the 90's, I worked for a while for a
market research firm specializing in high tech, with IBM, Unisys, and
others as customers. I recall talking to a rep for one of our clients
(Lotus Development, IIRC), who thought there was a substantial market
of people still using the DOS version of a product they sold. All I
could say was "Tell us where they are? All of the companies we call
to find out what they are doing in this area are moving to Windows as
fast as their legs will carry them."

Internally , we were using Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and one of my
efforts before the owner folded the company and moved on was trying to
use MS Access to create a database of the people we contacted (called
"sample" in the trade) to replace the hardcopy we used.

(I discovered that Access would let you *perfom* a relational join on
two tables with a menu choice. *Removing* .it once you had was far
more arcane and not well documented. This was not a surprise, because
Microsoft...)

> XW/NB were so configurable; that's not what I recall people giving as a reason
> for using them.

No, but it was a factor for various people in the XyWrite3 user's
group I was a member of, like the chap I mentioned. (Another was an
engineer working for a big law firm where a senior partner wanted to
switch from XyWrite internally to WP because that's what others used.
My guy was saying "How do I best explain to him the various things we
do with XyWrite that *can't'' be done* in WP?)

> This reminds me of Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird, whose
> interface and presentation of material is highly configurable if you learn css.

Less now, alas. Mozilla began as the internal name for a product to
create the next generation browser suite, to replace the venerable but
aging Netscape Communicator 4. They decided to make it open source
and open development to folks other than Netscape engineers. So far,
so good. But they also decided to "throw out the baby with the
bathwater", and instead of refactoring and extending the proven code
base, start with a blank page and create the new version from scratch.
(The decision was apparently made by a non-technical Netscape VP who
didn't understand what he was asking of the developers.)

Several *years* passed. Netscape 5 was bypassed entirely. Netscape 6
finally got released, but was buggy enough to be unusable (I think it
got released somely to demonstrate development really was occuring)
Netscape 7 was actually usable, and I did,

Part of the development was the Gecko rendering engine. Gecko
understood and rendered HTML, applied CSS, and via the SpiderMonkey
engine ran JavaScript. IT also implemented XUL, an XML language
intended for creating user interfaces. If you were fluent in XUL,
CSS, and widget sets, you could *completely* change the appearance of
Mozilla products. Amazing stuff got done in the Firefox 3 and 4
days.

Then Mozilla decided they needed to be in mobile, like Firefox on
Android, with the same underlying code base. XUL could not go along
for the ride. It is now deprecated on the desktop as well, and
steadily going away. (One announced reason is security. XUL executes
in a privileged context. I'd be happier if there were any verified
examples of bad actors using *XUL* as an attack vector.)

It used to be possible to run an extension that would apply user
defined CSS to web pages, and Firefox itself. The extension still
exists, but *can't* style Firefox. Doing that requires you to create
a userChrom.csse file in the profile directory with oyur desired CSS,
and restart Firefox to apply it. And what you can do in userChrome is
being steadily reduced. I expect it to go away entirely at some
point.

Mozilla is in trouble. The revenue that supports if is mostly derived
indirectly from advertising, and agreements with folks like Google and
others to feature them in the browser. To get those agreements, you
need market share, and Firefox's share of the browser market is
currently around 5%. Mozilla is now looking to *sell* products, like
its own branded Mozilla VPN to get money. Mozilla as an entity has
historically had an anti-commercial mindset ("Internet for people, not
profit"), and I don't believe it's institutionally capable of making
this transition.

I'd like to be wrong, but right now I'd be surprised if Mozilla and
Firefox still exist in 5 years.

-- Eric.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> Corel bought
> the WordPerfect Windows version, and still sells it, but as near as I
> can tell, they are essentially still serving the existing WordPerfect
> market that didn't want to switch. I don't think *new* sales are much
> of a factor.

I've used WP myself since the late 90s. Incorporating formatting codes in the
text stream just makes sense, and WP shows them all in context so you can make
changes and get everything exactly right. Compared to that, Word files are a
nightmare (which is why VDE was never very good at reading them).

I gather that WP's principal market these days is legal, and there are always
more lawyers. At least Corel knows its user base and doesn't alienate them by
constantly messing with the product, like Mozilla lately, who keep driving
away people who've used Firefox for years. The remaining user base is now so
tiny that they'll never succeed in branching out into anything else either.

Software designers today seem oblivious to the fact that users' needs don't
change much, and they don't want to waste time re-learning or changing habits
with every brilliant(?) new release. Even an operating system is now
developed as an experience in itself rather than a mere tool for running apps.
I suppose it's just a special case of late-stage capitalism which isn't
about what people actually want anymore (how quaint!) but what they can be
made to buy or do.

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

Mark P. Fishman wrote:
> Minimizing the amount of disk activity would have made it faster,
> so it's plausible for the spelling code to have been in the main executable.

Yes, perhaps I don't see a spelling overlay in the XyWrite file list because
there isn't one. It's small enough that it could have been built right into
the program.

I can't download Microlytics foreign dictionary files from xywrite.com for
testing; the resulting ZIP files are invalid.

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

Eric Meyer wrote:
> I can't download Microlytics foreign dictionary files from xywrite.com for
> testing; the resulting ZIP files are invalid.

Not sure why that didn't work, but Mark kindly downloaded and sent me the
German dictionary from NotaBene (DNDICT.SPL) and no, it doesn't work with VDE.
(It's also curiously large, over twice the size of the US or UK English
files in my Microlytics package.)

I suspect we've reached the end of this trail.

-- Eric.

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 7:06 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Eric Meyer wrote:
> > I can't download Microlytics foreign dictionary files from xywrite.com for
> > testing; the resulting ZIP files are invalid.
>
> Not sure why that didn't work, but Mark kindly downloaded and sent me the
> German dictionary from NotaBene (DNDICT.SPL) and no, it doesn't work with VDE.
> (It's also curiously large, over twice the size of the US or UK English
> files in my Microlytics package.)

The XyWrite site had an option to bundle tham as in one large Zip
file. I did, and the resulting Zip file opened and extracted just
fine.

> I suspect we've reached the end of this trail.

Likely

I haven't needed spellcheck, but I'd be tempted to use VDE's Alt R
functionality to shell to a command line, and call an external spell
checker program to look at the file VDE is editing.

An old PC editor I was fond of was Dr. David Nye's E.COM. You could
define FKey macros. Press an FKey, and E would look for a numbered
batch file, like 2.bat. You could create external filters as batch
files. Run the batch file, and E would write the contents of the
current edit buffer to a tamp file, run that batch file and pass it
the temp file name as what to work on, then reload the temp file from
disk, replacing the version being edited.

Is this something VDE might be able to do?

> -- Eric.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> An old PC editor I was fond of was Dr. David Nye's E.COM. You could
> define FKey macros. Press an FKey, and E would look for a numbered
> batch file, like 2.bat. You could create external filters as batch
> files. Run the batch file, and E would write the contents of the
> current edit buffer to a tamp file, run that batch file and pass it
> the temp file name as what to work on, then reload the temp file from
> disk, replacing the version being edited.
>
> Is this something VDE might be able to do?

Absolutely. Just list the commands you'd type to do this yourself, then
string them together into a VDE macro and assign it to a key:

^KB^QC^KK^KWtemp.fil[Enter] save content to temp.fil
AltRprocess temp.fil[Enter] invoke process.bat on it
^KLtemp.fil[Enter] load results as new content
^KJtemp.fil[Enter] clean up

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

Eric Meyer wrote:
> ^KB^QC^KK^KWtemp.fil[Enter] save content to temp.fil

Hmm... while that came first to mind to illustrate the principle, it assumes a
single-segment file. If multiple segments are possible you'd need a loop to
test for and append each one which is too complicated, so a better approach is
to save the whole file then create a temporary copy of it. Also I neglected
the [Esc] after AltR.

^KS AltRcopy ^F temp.fil[Enter][Esc] save content to temp.fil
AltRprocess temp.fil[Enter][Esc] invoke process.bat on it

[Eric Meyer]

Hmm... unfortunately ^KLtemp.fil leaves VDE editing TEMP.FIL instead of the
original filename. I leave as an exercise how you prefer to resolve that
using AltR (or process.bat) to rename the results before using ^KL^F to load
them under the original name, and whether/how you want to preserve a backup
file. Now we've fully illustrated the process of writing and refining a macro.

-- Eric.

[dmccunney]

I can think of a couple of other issues. One is the platform you are running on

The sorts of experimentation we talked about on the VDE list a while
back, where you were running VDE in emulation on a Windows platform is
one. Shell out of VDE under Windows and you are in the 32bit Windows
environment, talking to CMD.EXE. You can run batch files, but you are
not concerned with RAM still available to DOS after you shell from
VDE, and the sorts of things you can run while shelled out vastly
increase, and don't have to be DOS programs. You can run Windows GUI
apps if desired.

If you are being Old Skool, running a flavor of DOS native on old
hardware, concerns like the RAM available when shelled out of VDE, and
what DOS programs are available to run from a batch file in a shell
become important.

Still, I think we've validated the concept that you can run a spell
checker while shelled out of VDE on what you are editing, as an
alternative if you don't have the registered version of VDE including
the Microlyics SpellFinder overlay.

I'll have to think about how to make this an application note to post
to the VDE website for folks needing to spell check. *(That won;t
happen right away.)

> -- Eric.
+_
______
Dennis

[dmccunney]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 11:35 AM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> dmccunney wrote:
> >
>> <...>

> > Is this something VDE might be able to do?
>
> Absolutely. Just list the commands you'd type to do this yourself, then
> string them together into a VDE macro and assign it to a key:

<...>

Thank you. I suspected that was the case, but it's been some time
since I looked at VDE at that level.

E.COM tickled me as an example of what could be done in a small size.
Like VDE, it was written in assembly language. It edited file sizes
up to the limit of available memory, and had word wrap and settable
right and *left* margins, and did it in a 5K executable. Attaching
batch files to FKeys was a fringe benefit. Back in the BBS days, I
kept a copy on the RAMdisk on my XT clone, and used it as the editor
when using an offline reader to reply to BBS messages. Invocation was
instantaneous.

The major limitation was that E was limited to 80 column lines as a
side effect of the way text was stored. For BBS messaging where I
wanted a 72 column line, that was not a problem. But lines over 80
columns were silently truncated with no warning, and that bit me a
couple of times editing batch files. :-p

> -- Eric.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> Still, I think we've validated the concept that you can run a spell
> checker while shelled out of VDE on what you are editing, as an
> alternative if you don't have the registered version of VDE including
> the Microlyics SpellFinder overlay.
>
> I'll have to think about how to make this an application note to post
> to the VDE website for folks needing to spell check. *(That won;t
> happen right away.)

Believe me, you really don't want to do this. You'd be better off just
learning to spell. (I use a speller very rarely, for a handful of odd words
that seem a perpetual problem.)

It's not just the awkwardness of the above process, but what happens next.
The speller will flag what it thinks are errors with some sort of marker;
you'll have to search for that marker in the text and deal with each instance
manually; and you won't get interactive suggestions. TSRs like Borland's
TurboSpell worked better but an integrated speller is the only truly
convenient approach, which is why I licensed one.

-- Eric.

[Gary Welles]

Hello Eric,

Monday, October 25, 2021, 8:02:52 PM, you wrote:

> Believe me, you really don't want to do this. You'd be better off just learning to spell. (I use a speller very rarely, for a handful of odd words that seem a perpetual problem.)

I was at Wolff Typewriter/Computer in New York City in the mid-1980s, where I bought the last Osborne Executive, when someone asked the salesperson about a spell checker. She replied "What's the matter can't you spell?"

--
Best regards,
Gary Welles

[Eric Meyer]

Eric Meyer wrote:
> TSRs like Borland's TurboSpell worked better...

Sorry, I meant Turbo Lightning. I think all the old Borland products were
eventually released as freeware so one might be able to find this today, but
I've found that TSRs with hotkeys don't work in vDOSplus -- which is
unfortunate as it has plenty of memory to load them in.

[Eric Meyer]

Gary Welles wrote:
> I was at Wolff Typewriter/Computer in New York City in the mid-1980s, where I bought the last Osborne Executive, when someone asked the salesperson about a spell checker. She replied "What's the matter can't you spell?"

Actually, I suspect the principal purpose of a spell checker for most people
is catching typing errors, rather than correcting misspelling. I wonder
whether a study has ever been done on that.

[Sheldon Isaac]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:21:49 -0600
Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote (in part):

> Actually, I suspect the principal purpose of a spell checker for most
> people is catching typing errors, rather than correcting
> misspelling.

Certainly true of me; I've been a poor typist for many decades, but can
spell fairly well.

--
Thanks,
Sheldon

[dmccunney]

I've no idea if a study has been done, but I think you're right..Gmail
flags spelling errors (underlining them in red), and tries to correct
syntax errors (underlined in blue.) I find the former very useful,
because I do make typing errors. -The latter are of some use, but
more often than not, the syntax I used is correct for the context, and
Gmail's parser didn't have the context.

A larger problem I see is people trying to write who need spelling and
grammar checkers to be able to write at all. I think of the late Isaac
Asimov, who was a 90 WPM touch typist, and routinely submitted first
drafts to editors. He knew what he wanted to say, and said it the
first time. The folks I encounter *can't* line things up in their head
tio come out as desired on the page, and must use external tools to
provide the context and coherence other folks have going in. (I have
had people comment when meeting me in person after corresponding with
me that I speak like I write. Well, yes. I tend to speak in
grammatical sentences, because I think that way.. It's just the way
my mind works, and not something I normally have to work at.)

My thoughts on VDE macros to run an external spell checker were
prompted by Leo's query. Okay, you can no longer get VDE's bundled
Microlytics SpellFinder overlay. Perhaps there is a way to use vDE
macros to do something similar with an external program. If I do try
to create an application note for the website, I might generalize it
to how to call external programs from VDE using AltR,.with reference
to things like awk and sed. Same concept - call an external program
to operate on what VDE is editing, and replace the current editing
version with the changed version if changes were made. Determining
whether changes were made might require playing games with return
codes from the external program, which is a whole other can of worms.

I may pass on the idea, but I'm intrigued by the concept.
______
Dennis.

[m...@panix.com]

A little off-topic, but someone else uses a "DOS" window within Windows XP:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdeay/the-dune-screenplay-was-written-in-ms-dos

[Mark P. Fishman]

quote from article, quoting the screenwriter:

In the video, he pulled up a DOS window in Windows XP and booted up Movie Master 3.09 on an ancient beige mechanical keyboard. “So now I’m in DOS. Nobody can get on the internet and get this,” Roth said. “I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers and then I have to work through their computer because you can’t even email mine or anything. You can’t get to it except where it is. It has 40 pages and it runs out of memory.”

Most of that is nonsense. Windows XP *can* still get on the Internet (although it's probably a bad idea these days). Movie Master *does* create files that can be transferred via email or on [gasp] floppies (although it's questionable whether anything else can read the file format). Unless he's using some kind of emulation software, there is no "DOS window", only the XP command window (either CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM, which IIRC still existed in XP). And application software doesn't "boot".

If his screenplay is as inarticulate and approximate as his speech, then it's worthy of Dune. (There: I've said it. There are some books by Frank Herbert I liked, and none of the Dune books is among them.)

At least they mention that George R.R. Martin writes his books using WordStar. So does Robert J. Sawyer, and his web site (www.sfwriter.com) has an extensive section on running WordStar in a (real) DOS emulation window. Some of his configuration info probably applies to VDE (so this is relevant).

-- m.

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[Gary Welles]

Wednesday, October 27, 2021, 12:52:20 AM, Moy wrote:

> A little off-topic, but someone else uses a "DOS" window within Windows XP:

> https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdeay/the-dune-screenplay-was-written-in-ms-dos

The Ken Burns documentary Hemingway explained that he revised the final paragraph(s) on a novel something like 43 times. I don't think he was bedeviled by spelling errors.

As the Representative Town Meeting's liaison to our municipal golf course's advisory board I deliver brief reports to the RTM. I compose with WordStar, print to PostScript file which I convert to a PDF with a batch file that uses GhostScript. The real work gets done after I read the .PDF in Windows Foxit followed by several trips back to WordStar.

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> The latter are of some use, but
> more often than not, the syntax I used is correct for the context, and
> Gmail's parser didn't have the context.

I've never tried a grammar checker but can't imagine them being any good, due
to the complexity and subtlety involved. I'm not surprised that besides not
being very helpful, they would also have annoying false positives.

> A larger problem I see is people trying to write who need spelling and

> grammar checkers to be able to write at all...

I too see a close connection between writing and thinking, so people who have
trouble with one also tend to with the other. That's why it's so important to
teach writing better than we tend to. (The other missing element in
"critical" thinking is empirical reasoning, which would be a reason to teach
more science, or at least more about science.)

-- Eric.

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 12:52 AM <m...@panix.com> wrote:
>

> A little off-topic, but someone else uses a "DOS" window within Windows XP:
>
> https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdeay/the-dune-screenplay-was-written-in-ms-dos

He.s not the only one. Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin is
an old WordStar user, as is SF writer Robert Sawyer, who has a page on
his website dedicated to running WS under an emulator in Windows. (I
know both, and first met George when he was first starting his writing
career, and making his living running chess tournaments. He griped
that he was rated Expert but unlikely to make Master because he was
too busy running tournaments to compete in them.)

SF/fantasy writer Elizabeth Moon is another. Her first WP system was
WordStar. She uses MS Word these days, because publishers all expect
to get Word documents as submission files, and editors *live* in
Word's Track Changes feature when going back and forth with writers on
revisions. Word back when she griped about it fell down hard on
really *long* documents, like novel manuscripts. She talked about
getting stuck in a manuscript on where to go next, and booting
WordStar to work on it. The familiar environment she learned to do WP
on reduced friction and let her concentrate solely on the writing
challenge. (I know Elizabeth electronically, and we have friends in
common, but I haven't met her in person.)

I know writers that might prefer Libre Office Writer, but kept Word
around for submission drafts because Writer wasn't compatible then
with Word's Track Changes feature. (It's better now.) For that
matter, I found a freeware Android office suite whose editor component
appears to support Track Changes.

The fact that Roth still runs XP is more significant. Looks like he
never discovered the joys of OS emulation.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

Mark P. Fishman wrote:
> In the video, he pulled up a DOS window in Windows XP and booted up Movie

> Master 3.09 on an ancient beige mechanical keyboard...

Go beige! For my new computer (after years with only a laptop) I found a
classic keyboard that I'm really enjoying, and should last as long as I do.
While compact, it fully emulates all AT keys if needed, and even switches
Caps/Ctrl without hacking the Windows registry:
https://fujitsuscannerstore.com/cg01000-291001/

I recall mostly liking "Dune" but never bothering with its sequel(s)... while
the movie, which I saw part of later on TV, was lurid trash. I'm surprised to
learn that Herbert himself wrote the screenplay.

> Most of that is nonsense. Windows XP *can* still get on the Internet (although

> it's probably a bad idea these days)...

An increasingly insecure and incompatible browser was the *only* reason I was
finally obliged to replace my XP laptop this year. Email is much simpler and
would still have worked fine for Herbert too, so yes the article is silly. As
for "DOS Window" though, that's exactly how I thought of it myself; a shortcut
to COMMAND.COM was actually labeled "MSDOS Window", and while I quickly
switched to using CMD instead (unless I needed full screen), I renamed its
shortcut to "DOS Window", with hotkey ^@D. I'm not impressed by your
distinction between these and a "real DOS emulation window" in practice, since
vDOS etc all have their glitches and limitations too. We're just fortunate
that over time all these options have worked well enough.

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

Eric Meyer wrote:
> I recall mostly liking "Dune" but never bothering with its sequel(s)... while
> the movie, which I saw part of later on TV, was lurid trash. I'm surprised to
> learn that Herbert himself wrote the screenplay.

Oops, time warp. I should have read Moy's link! Apparently there's a new
Dune movie coming out, and the screenwriter isn't Herbert. Is it likely to be
better? I liked the original "Star Wars" but quickly lost interest in the
sequels and still don't get their appeal.

[Mark P. Fishman]

> As for "DOS Window" though, that's exactly how I thought of it myself;

> a shortcut to COMMAND.COM was actually labeled "MSDOS Window",

> and while I quickly switched to using CMD instead (unless I needed

> full screen), I renamed its shortcut to "DOS Window", with hotkey ^@D.

>  I'm not impressed by your distinction between these and a "real

> DOS emulation window" in practice, since vDOS etc all have their

> glitches and limitations too.  We're just fortunate that over time all

> these options have worked well enough.

I imagine that I was thinking of some kind of emulation that required running an actual copy of MS-DOS or perhaps FreeDOS, as is needed for the dosemu application in Linux, or even the hack of exiting Windows95/98 to an actual DOS prompt (the thing that booted first, and then was used to load the protected-mode user interface).

However, just for fun, I have now loaded COMMAND.COM on Windows 10:

and it says "Windows DOS" at the top! It uses code page 437, and there's also something called "legacy console mode" that's supposed to be friendlier to some kinds of old applications. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/legacymode

CMD.EXE looks completely different:

Of course :) I'm running 32-bit Windows 10. 64-bit Windows 10 might be different from what I am seeing. In any case, Eric, my apologies for my half-baked irritation.

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[Mark P. Fishman]

If you can stand to read Krugman's analysis, apparently the new "Dune" movie is better than the old one.

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=116&emc=edit_pk_20211026&instance_id=43797&nl=paul-krugman&productCode=PK&regi_id=1438290&segment_id=72667&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fc2359ac8-d160-5046-a94c-b44b504ed95e&user_id=505c8e88de3aa37593f5610a97a97c61

I still don't care for the book, though.

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[dmccunney]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 2:38 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I recall mostly liking "Dune" but never bothering with its sequel(s)... while
> the movie, which I saw part of later on TV, was lurid trash. I'm surprised to
> learn that Herbert himself wrote the screenplay.

If the film version you refer to is the Dino De Laurentts production
from 1984, Herbert did *not* write the screenplay. That was the
product of David Lynch, who also directed. People who knew I liked SF
back then asked my opinion of the film. I said "If you haven't
*read* the book, you might like the film but *won't* understand it.
If you *have* read the book, you'll hate the film!"
A friend was at the time Executive Editor of the SF line for the
publisher that had the Dune book rights. She described marketing
types from the film side going on about tie-in merchandise, like Dune
coloring books and action figures. "Dune *coloring *books?" Yeah,
complete with crayons, black and brown. :"Dune *aation figures*?"
including a Baron Harkonnen figure carrying a cat in a cage. Just
don't put it on the shelf next to the Paul Atriedes figure. (Baron
Harkonnen in the book liked boys as sex partners.)

It was clear to her and her staff that none of them had read the book
or had a clue about the story.

The SciFi channel on TV did a Dune mini-series that at least tried to
do it right. I could pick holes in what they did, but they were
nothing compared to the travesty that was the De Laqurentis film.

There's a new production that has just been released, and is getting
positive reviews from SF folks, so I have modest hopes.

Dune has spawned many book sequels. Herbert originally wrote Dun,
Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune as one *long( epsic, tht was split
into parts to be something publishable as books. I advise new readers
to read the first three, than see idf the are motivated to go further.
Herbert's sone Brian, haq been working with prolific SF author Keving
J. Anderson to turn his father's notes into subsequent books. They
sell, but I'm not interested. Too much new SF to read.

> -- Eric.
_______
Dennis

[m...@panix.com]

The SyFy Channel version of Dune (2000) seems to be available on YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wXEkoO35MyI

[m...@panix.com]

Beige? We used to call it "IBM Putty." All the "100% IBM-compatible" clones came in similar hues.

Oh yes, anybody remember the really nice Northgate keyboards?

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 2:38 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> An increasingly insecure and incompatible browser was the *only* reason I was
> finally obliged to replace my XP laptop this year.

Insecure is just the tip of that iceberg.

Browser development is driven by evolving web standards. These days,
you must support HTML5 (which is an evolving standard), CSS3, SVG, and
a *current* version of JavaScript. (JavaScript has a standard -
ECMAscript - but that is evolving as well, with ECMAScript 6 being
current, but further revisions will occur.)

The biggest reason for HTML5 support ids the <video> keyword, that
will let you stream data without encapsulating it as a Shockwave Flash
object. Flash no longer exists on mobile devices like Android and
iOS, and is going away on desktops and laptops as fast as can be
managed.

But supporting the <video> keyword means you need a codec to decode
and play the video stream/=, That was fun. The default standard was
H_264 for video. That was proprietary, and you had to pay a license
fee to include it. YouTube had a test page years back to see if your
browser had HTML5 support, or if you still needed the Flash version.
Internet Explorer and Chrome handled HTML5, because they had a paid
license for the codec. Firefox did not. Mozilla could afford the
license fee, but Firefox is open source, and everything it has must be
available in source form too. Mozilla could not provide source code for
the codec.

Things got more interesting when Google decided to make Chrome open
source, and was investigating open source codecs that might be used
instead. Cisco Systems broke the logjam by negotiating an H_264
license that would let them provide a reference source implementation,
and that's what everyone uses now.

The fundamental issue is that rendering engines are now huge and
complex, and cost a lot of money to develop and maintain. Smaller
browser vendors simply can't afford the R&D costs. So now we are left
with Google Blink Mozilla Gecko, and Apple's Safari WebKit. Google's
engine is a fork of WebKt. Opefras dropped development of their own
Pango engine and switched to Blink. Given Mozilla's problems, how
much longer Gecko will exist is a good question.
______
Dennis



> -- Eric.

>
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--
_______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

Mark P. Fishman wrote:
> However, just for fun, I have now loaded COMMAND.COM <http://COMMAND.COM> on
> Windows 10...

It's no longer present on 64-bit Windows, and if I copied my XP version over
and tried to run it I'm sure I'd get the same error any 16-bit code now
generates. I probably should have upgraded to 32-bit Win10 when I had the
chance, but waited too long.

By the way, Google now seems to mark "COMMAND.COM" as a hyperlink! Can we
defeat that somehow? (It goes to something related to 3M)

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

m...@panix.com wrote:
> Oh yes, anybody remember the really nice Northgate keyboards?

Of course. I think Realforce is as close as one can come to those today.
(There are other mechanical models but they tend to be gaming-oriented with
colored lights etc.)

-- Eric.

[Mark P. Fishman]

hyperlink: I'd probably have to type command dot com, or some such. The price of progress.

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[Mark P. Fishman]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 2:13 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

I probably should have upgraded to 32-bit Win10 when I had the
chance, but waited too long.

It's not too late. You have a license to run Windows 10, yes? It is valid for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. A tool to download Windows installation ISOs (more flexible than the interface Microsoft provides) is at

 https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool

Virustotal says it's clean, and I've used it multiple times with no issues. Download the 32-bit ISO you want, install it on a blank HD in the same computer hardware as your licensed Win10, and you should be good to go. Or just keep a backup installation image in case of need.

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 3:45 PM Mark P. Fishman <mfis...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 2:13 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I probably should have upgraded to 32-bit Win10 when I had the
>> chance, but waited too long.
>
> It's not too late. You have a license to run Windows 10, yes? It is valid for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. A tool to download Windows installation ISOs (more flexible than the interface Microsoft provides) is at
> https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool

*sigh*

This is *not* -a good idea. In fact, it's a very *bad* one.

When MS first released Win10, there were a lot of legacy machines
running things like Win7 on 32 bit machines. MS made the upgrade to
Win10 free to unify the code base, and get as much of the Windows
installed base as possible *on* Win10 to reduce the enormous issues of
support, and 32 bit builds of Win10 were part of that effort..The
*only* reason to get one of these ISOs now is that you still have 32
bit machines you want to use.

Now, every PC or laptop you buy will *be* a 6e bit machine. No one is
still *making* 32 bit x86 hardware. 64 bit machines can run 32 bit
code, and there are a number of Windows apps that are not yet built in
32 bit versions, but the reverse is not true. The biggest addition in
64 bit Windows is the *much* larger address space. 32 bit machines
have a 4GB address space. Most Windows programs don't *need* a larger
one, so there is no hurry to make 64 bit builds. Some things *do*, and
*browsers* are one of them.

Eric bought a new laptop solely because Firefox was increasingly less
secure and compatible with current web browsing neweds. What happens
if Eric wipes his machine and uses a 32 bit build of Win10? I don't
believe Mozilla currently *makes* 32 bit builds of Firefox, and he's
back where he was when he upgraded. I believe the same is true for
Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (which is built on top of Google's
Blink rendering engine.) Want to go online and browse the web? You
need a 64 bit machine. Tough. Deal.

32 bit Windows supported old 16 bit applications using NTVDM. 64 bit
Windows dropped support entirely for 16 bit applications. If you
need that, you run an emulator like DOBox, vDOS, vDOS Plus, or DOSEmu.
There is no need to use NTVDM to get that support.

I run vDOS and various other DOS applications on Win10 Pro using vDOS
Plus. DOS applications all live in an MSDOS directory on SATA drive
D:\. VDE lives in D:\MSDOS\VDE. vDOS Plus lives in
C:\Tools\vDosPlus\VDP201511\vDosPlus\vDosPlus.exe.

Running VDOS Plus happens in a shortcut, which involves vDOS Plus, but
*starts* in the directory of the DOS application I want to run. vDOS
Plus uses autoexec.txt and config.xt files to configure it for the
application. It reads those files on startup and sets itself up as
configured and runs the app.

For VDE the files are:

AUTOEXEC.XT
@echo off
use C:\
: Specify a fancy ANSI DOS prompt, which puts an inverse video bar at
the top of the screen with current directory and date/time. :
: The D:\VE prompt moves down the screen while the top bar stays in
place. This is only see nwhen shelled out of VDE.
prompt $e[s$e[H$e[7m$e[0;1m $d $e[0;7m$p$e[K$e[1;80H$e[m$e[u$e[0;1m
[$e[m$z$e[1m] $e[m
C:
cd \MSDOS\VDE
vde.exe
: When VDE is exited, exit the DOS Plus window, too
exit

==========

CONFIG.TXT
REM Configuration
: vDOS supports EMS, but it's not needed here.
REM EMS = ON
: Include first 64K of DOS memory by default. Some old DOS programs
choke on this.
: Turning LOW off reduces reported DOS memory from 640K to about 575K
LOW = ON
: You can specify a TrueType font to use. The font file must exist in
the application directory, as <fontname>.ttf
REM FONT = LUCON
: Turn on the window border. The default is run in full screen with no border
FRAME = ON
: Enable the mouse if you have one and the DOS app can use it. The
mouse works in VDE but is better off
MOUSE = OFF
: Configure the Window size. This value will vary, depending on your hardware.
: 40 is good for my 23" monitor in 1920x1080 resolution.
WINDOW = 40
: Number of screen rows
LINS = 50
: Number of screen columns
COLS = 80

vDOS Plus is built on DOSBox. The biggest limitation DOS users will
encounter is that drivers loaded in CONFIG.SYS are not supported. Some
TSRs *are* supported, loaded in AUTOEXEC.TXT, but I don't load them
for a VDE session. DOSBox is cross platform, and runs on PCs. Linux,
and OS/X. I have an Android tablet I gort VDE running on using an
Android port of DOSBox.

I do have one old DOS game where a vDOS Plus upgrade broke screen
handling. I use DOSBox for it instead.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> I don't believe Mozilla currently *makes* 32 bit builds of Firefox

Actually they do seem to, though one doesn't know for how long. But while
32-bit might have seemed more convenient, I agree with the general point that
64-bit Win10 really makes more sense today and emulators like vDOS+ work well
enough in it to replace NTVDM.

One thing I don't see in your AUTOEXEC.TXT is a custom palette, which I find
very useful as the default colors and contrast are rather ugly/harsh. Here
are my settings which offer nicer choices in VINST, especially for
white-background text:

REM (COLORS= in CONFIG.TXT would be simpler but doesn't work?)
setcolor 0 #0A0A0A
setcolor 1 #0044BB
setcolor 2 #009000
setcolor 3 #0090B0
REM (4=#AA0000 unchanged)
setcolor 5 #C08000
setcolor 6 #BBAA28
setcolor 7 #BBBBBB
setcolor 8 #666666
setcolor 9 #60B0FF
setcolor 10 #55E055
setcolor 11 #55E0E0
setcolor 12 #F04444
setcolor 13 #FFC000
setcolor 14 #F0E240
setcolor 15 #F0F0F0

-- Eric.

[Mark P. Fishman]

Dennis:

I did not say that Eric should WIPE his current disk. I said that (if he wants to try a 32-bit build of Win10) it's not too late, and he can put it on a separate BLANK HD using the same license he currently uses.

I agree that if you can run everything you need to run in a 64-bit OS, that's probably the right choice. My computer has a 64-bit capable CPU, but because the box has only 4GB of RAM -- it was purchased with 32-bit Win 7 at a time when DOSbox couldn't even print unless you found a semi-competent fork, and vDOS-forks didn't exist yet -- it is running 32-bit Win10. It runs 32-bit Firefox, which updates periodically. It runs 32-bit Chrome, which updates periodically. It even runs 32-bit Opera, which is still available for Windows and updates periodically (although Linux has to be 64-bit to run Opera because there's no 32-bit Opera on Linux).

I might look stupid on line, but if you actually read what I wrote sometimes I make a little sense.

-- m.

[Mark P. Fishman]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 7:35 PM dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 3:45 PM Mark P. Fishman <mfis...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>  A tool to download Windows installation ISOs (more flexible than the interface Microsoft provides) is at
>  https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool

The

*only* reason to get one of these ISOs now is that you still have 32
bit machines you want to use.

NO. Obviously you didn't look at the tool, or at the ISOs that Microsoft makes available. The reason to have an up to date ISO is so that, when your hard disk crashes, you can install a relatively recent build to bare metal and not have to (re)install all the patches that might ever have come out since you backed up the installation directory on your computer-as-shipped.

If you have ANY version of Windows, or Linux, or macOS, or any other operating system, you should have a way to restore a bare-metal backup (if you have one) or a way to create test systems with specific builds of the OS that you migt want for development reasons. Microsoft actually lets you do this, IF you can download the installation image.

The tool I referred to is not specific to 32-bit OSes. Before you leap to the conclusion that I'm even dumber than I look, please at least look at the links I offer.

 

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 2:06 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> dmccunney wrote:
> > The latter are of some use, but
> > more often than not, the syntax I used is correct for the context, and
> > Gmail's parser didn't have the context.
>
> I've never tried a grammar checker but can't imagine them being any good, due
> to the complexity and subtlety involved. I'm not surprised that besides not
> being very helpful, they would also have annoying false positives.

The state of that art has improved as computer power has increased.
One well regarded grammar checking tool these days is Grammarly, at
https://www.grammarly.com/ It;s an online Grammar checker with a
Firefox addin available for ir. (I haven't tried it, because I have
no no need.)

> > A larger problem I see is people trying to write who need spelling and
> > grammar checkers to be able to write at all...
>
> I too see a close connection between writing and thinking, so people who have
> trouble with one also tend to with the other. That's why it's so important to
> teach writing better than we tend to. (The other missing element in
> "critical" thinking is empirical reasoning, which would be a reason to teach
> more science, or at least more about science.)

I fear the school system will have limited success.

I mentioned tending to think and speak in grammatical sentences. I've
done so as long as I can ercall, and am pretty sure I did it before
learning to read. (I do *not* remember *not* knowing how to read.)
Like many things we learn, I absorbed the practice by osmosis,
beginning at a pre-verbal age, from my parents, because that was the
way *they* communicated.

I think people incapable of stringing words together in their head to
the extent that they *need* spelling and grammar checkers to write at
all had *very* different upbringings. The school system will have an
uphill battle in overcoming that lack.

And teaching critical thinking will be a bigger challenge. I consider
rationality a thin veneer over emotion. Most of what passes for
rational thought consists of finding rational reasons after the fact
why what we already decided to do on a gut level is not only a good
idea, but the best possible move under the circumstances. It tends
*not*. to be done before the decision is made. Even more creativity is
expended when it blows up in our faces, and we look for reasons why It
Wasn't Our Fault, and we weren't arguably stupid to have done it in
the first place.

An enormous amount of critical thinking will be determinedly avoided,
if what we are asked to think critically about is the unconscious
assumptions that drive our decision, and it is precisely those
unconscious assumptions that need to be made conscious and examined..

> -- Eric.
______
Dennis

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 4:35 PM <m...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> The SyFy Channel version of Dune (2000) seems to be available on YouTube:
>
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wXEkoO35MyI

That's part 1 of three, butParts 2 nnd 3 are up as well, Added to my
bookmarks. Thank you!
______
Dennis

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 2:13 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> By the way, Google now seems to mark "COMMAND.COM" as a hyperlink! Can we
defeat that somehow? (It goes to something related to 3M)

It's treated as a hyperlink because command.com is a valid website.
(It's a consumer products subsidiary of 3M Corporation.

I don't know a way to defeat that behavior that wouldn't break other things.

Best to just call it COMMAND, and it should be clear to folks here.

> -- Eric.
______
Dennis

[Eric Meyer]

dmccunney wrote:
> I fear the school system will have limited success.

Well, it *had* limited success, but it's not even trying anymore. Instead
today it's teaching material like "Critical"(!) Race Theory that dispenses
entirely with empirical reasoning. In the terms you just stated, it's
actually *teaching* people to construct and repeat shoddy rationalizations for
what they choose to believe or do. I see no institution left to fight this now.

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

Mark P. Fishman wrote:
> I said that (if he wants

> to try a 32-bit build of Win10) it's not too late...

Thanks for the suggestion, but I spent a couple of months beating the system I
have into shape and have no energy left for such experimentation. In a way
I'm actually glad I didn't have to *decide* between 32- and 64-bit.

-- Eric.

[Gary Welles]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 2:06 PM Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've never tried a grammar checker but can't imagine them being any good, due
> to the complexity and subtlety involved. I'm not surprised that besides not
> being very helpful, they would also have annoying false positives.

I have Grammitik 5. Used it once to proof read a friends thesis. As I wasn't given much time it did a good job of ripping through it and highlighting dreadful parts. I would have been more efficient if I'd had time to adjust the writing style. Locating the manuals and finding GMK.exe it displayed "Preferences: Pat's Thesis" and "Writing style: General - Standard Formality". Having more time now than then I see it offers "Writing style: Thesis - Formal". The styles are also customizable so it could be programmed to clean up your act. My first look at it in decades.

In credit to man vs. machine, I spotted "U.S. Navel Academy".