Announcement

**Lubos Svoboda** · 9 May 2005, 08:29 AM

It is a few wishesh in this forum. Stephane probably migrated
to Pure Basic and we others do not believe in next version of
PB/DOS in this century. But hope dies least. Maybe after
Longhorn releasing....
I miss a support of Code Page 852 (or some ekvivalent treatment of
characters used in East Europe). Please, consider it.

Lubos

------------------
Lubos
A view on PowerBASIC

**Udo Kuhnt** · 9 May 2005, 03:36 PM

> It is a few wishesh in this forum. Stephane probably migrated
> to Pure Basic and we others do not believe in next version of
> PB/DOS in this century. But hope dies least. Maybe after
> Longhorn releasing....

I think PureBASIC is a Windows program, so it does not qualify.
I stopped using Windows more than six years ago, and I will
definetely *not* go back to it for *any* program.

Also, I read that many others have asked for a version 4.0 of
PowerBASIC before, and someone of the staff even mentioned that
eventually there will be a version 4.0. What has happened to
this promise?

BTW, does the PowerBASIC staff still read these posts? If yes,
I would like to let them know that there is demand for a modern
BASIC compiler, and PowerBASIC 3.5 does no longer fit the bill.
I have already split some of my PowerBASIC programs into many
modules to reduce the size, but this can only be a temporary
solution. We need a new version of PowerBASIC that can make use
of *all* the installed memory, not just conventional or EMS.
And we need the ability to run programs without the memory
restrictions imposed by the memory models of the early 80s. C,
C++, Pascal, even Fortran support the 32-bit DPMI interface by
now, so why not PowerBASIC?

Udo

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-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de

**Paul Squires** · 9 May 2005, 08:22 PM

I remember asking about DPMI support a few years ago and was told
(by Bob Zale, I believe) that adding such support would require
an almost total rewrite of the compiler. Such a large scale rewrite
of the DOS compiler would not be something that PowerBASIC would
probably do given the relative importance of DPMI support versus
other product development (like a Linux version of PB).

Nevertheless, I'm sure that the PB staff certainly read these posts
and would add the DPMI request to the PB/DOS wish list.

------------------
Paul Squires
FireFly Visual Designer, Cheetah Database System, JellyFish Pro Editor
www.planetsquires.com

**Udo Kuhnt** · 10 May 2005, 06:59 AM

Well, I have been writing extended DOS applications myself, so
I can tell that porting a real mode DOS program to DPMI using a
DOS extender is not that difficult because the extender takes
care of 99% of the necessary translation work. It would
definetely be not nearly as difficult as porting PB to Linux.
And I think that PB/CC has almost everything that a DPMI
version of PB would need, except for the memory allocation
routines.

Also, the fact that there are at least five DOS users for every
Linux user in the world says a lot about the relative
importance of DPMI.

Yes, I know that there are other statistics that claim that
almost no one is using DOS anymore, but I also know that the
number of downloads of the Enhanced DR-DOS OS from my website
alone is by far exceeding those numbers. Add to this the user
base of FreeDOS, and you get a hint of the true interest in
DOS today.

Udo

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-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de

**Donald Darden** · 15 May 2005, 06:24 PM

There are many people, including myself, that were reluctant to
leave DOS and accept Windows as an alternative. For a number
of years, I mostly used Windows as a vehicle for just getting to
a DOS that would support extended/expanded memory, long file
names, larger disk volumes, and so on.

But the inevitability was that without vender support, both for
the OS and for new devices, DOS was going to become far less
relevant in the future. And for most developers, it has been
necessary to go in the direction that their customers have
steering. PowerBasic produces commercially viable compilers,
and they have to follow the developers' lead in order to gain
and retain market share,

Let's be frank: How much new business for PowerBasic does the
whole of the DOS community represent? Many use old PCs that
they don't intend to replace until they wear out, and many have
foregone all manner of new features and devices because the
venders failed to supply DOS-compatable drivers. Further, DOS
is ill suited to the needs of multitasking and handling tasks
well in the background. It really needs to be revamped in
order to give it the flexability to make it more useful.

But the industry, or PC community, has already decided that
Linux is alteady a more powerful alternative. And a portion of
the business community is seriously considering if and when they
will commit to transitioning to Linux. And increasingly, there
are tools to minimize the effort involved, the GUI distinctions
between Windows and Linux, and at the same time venders of both
hardware and software are hedging their bets by writing versions
of their drivers and software products that will work in both
environments.

If you want someone to blame for the lack of support for DOS,
look at the original provider. M$ planned obsolescence program
and business model has been to enrich the company by forcing
its customers to rebuy and reinvest in its offerings over time,
bringing only marginal improvements in some cases, or imposing
severe performance penalties that took a few more generations
of PC development to overcome adequately. If the Intel/AMD
competition (or war, rather), had not brought those needed
improvements in time, M$ overreach would likely have caused it
to fail at some point.

While DOS extenders and alternate DOS compatable operating
systems exist, they have failed to gain sufficient support or
standardization to make a real impression. You can't even find
uniformity in the DOS community, as there is no standardization
in what you use (DOS 3.0 to DOS 7.0 under Win9x/Me), no
consistency in what you need (how much memory or external
device support), no commitment from an Open Source community
to expand and maintain what you want, and no indication that
any of you would willing expend any real money to make change
happen - you want it cheap or free (as we all do), but it just
isn't going to happen.

Bob Zale is a realist. I'm sure he would be more than glad to
double the size of his staff and pay to have his products made
over to work with whatever OS is out there, just as long as he
sees a real market for his end product. What he really sees
is a demand for an alternative to M$ bloatware and an eventual
need for a Linux version, needed specifically for developer's
who want to help transition their clients away from Windows.

I think M$ aggressive efforts to ensure future versions are all
properly licenced, registered, and current before you can do
any upgrades or download fixes is going to be its undoing in
that regard.

what I don't think Mr. Zale sees is a real market demand or
opportunity to sell into the DOS community. Maybe there is a
pent up demand there that just hasn't expressed itself, but DOS
isn't a good bet if he can't get the operating system itself to
carry a lot of the load for new features. That means that some
version of DOS itself must first show evidence of new life, gain
new strength, become the accepted standard for all the DOS world,
and show promise of a real future for new development. I think
the rest of us would concur with Mr. Zale that to date, there is
no clear evidence that any of that is going to happen.

The inevitable conclusion seems to be that if you don't want
Windows, then Linux is your next best choice. DOS extenders
and running DOS emulators are stopgap methods of extending the
life of what you have, but the outcome seems to be one of those
two, or a Mac. The BeOS operating system was a real stab to
try to break the GUI stranglehold that Windows as put on the
industry, and it failed. The Mac is struggling to expand, and
yet though often superior, it's higher cost and lack of market
penetration keep if from doing much more than retaining a slim
market share. DOS is far less powerful than any of the other
mentioned OS'es are, and there is no doubt of its legacy status.

It isn't that DOS isn't capable; it's just that DOS does not
show evidence of new life or growth. It particularly does not
show indication of real demand or marketing potential. Old
retreads like me that now program in the latter stages of our
productive lives are not a driving force for enhancements to
PB/DOS, because we don't represent a buying segment of the
industry. If I buy something now, I really have to justify
the cost. Often I forego or put off buys until I encounter a
situation that really justifies the expense, rather than
investing to be current or to satisfy my own cravings for the
latest and greatest. I am sure that many in the DOS community
fall into that same category, thought there may be some new
blood out there as well. But in time, most of you will move
away from DOS, despite your wishies, because it is not where
the future points.

The opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect what Mr.
Zale or the fine folks at PowerBasic really think, nor of what
they actually will end up doing. However, I hold all concerned
in the highest regard, and believe my accessment is a valid and
realistic one. Given the responsibility of making PowerBasic
profitable, a new or expanded version of PB/DOS would be at the
bottom of my list of things to do, and in this fast paced world,
just taking care of the top few things is all that anyone can
manage. So, the self-evident fact is, though it would be nice to
see it happen, PB/DOS 4.0 has probably been sidelined
indefinately, probably never to be realized.

But you knew that all along, didn't you? You just wanted to
shame or embarrass someone at PowerBasic in admitting it, right?
Well, were I in charge, I might concede the point if hard
pressed, but who knows? If the market and need were ever to
express itself adequately, things could change. Perhaps a PB/DOS
4.0 will eventually emerge dispite my own reservations on the
possibility.

------------------
Old Navy Chief, Systems Engineer, Systems Analyst, now semi-retired

**Udo Kuhnt** · 15 May 2005, 07:00 PM

Hi Donald,

you really worked hard to engineer an explanation for lack of
support from companies like PowerBASIC, but I think you
overlooked a few things.

First, DOS development *is* active, it is just no longer
Microsoft who do the development work. Had you bothered to
click on the link below, then you would have known that.

Second, there has always been more to DOS than to MS-DOS. OSes
like DR-DOS have multi-tasking for more than ten years now, and
other features are no longer a domain of Windows, either.

Third, there are *free* alternatives to PowerBASIC, so lack of
a new version of PowerBASIC for DOS would only spell the end of
PB/DOS, not of BASIC for DOS, and certainly not of DOS in
general.

Fourth, a version 4.0 of PB/DOS would be at a disadvantage, but
only if Bob Zale would allow it to fall too far behind those
alternatives. However, I doubt that anyone would still consider
PB 4.0 an alternative if it would take another couple of years
to show up.

Fifth, not all DOS users are the paupers that you view them. I
have a PC with a Pentium4/3066, 256MB memory and two 150GB hard
disks myself, amongst others, and that is not uncommon
nowadays.
Even if not, a system that a poor person could afford would
still be something like an old K6-II machine, so it would be
way beyond the scope of PB 3.5.

DOS is not an OS for the poor, and it definetely is not a
legacy OS, at least not more than Windows or Linux.
If software companies continue to boycott it, though, they may
find out that the only thing they have managed to achieve is to
lose their market share to freeware.

Regards,

Udo

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-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de

[This message has been edited by Udo Kuhnt (edited May 15, 2005).]

Announcement

PowerBASIC v4.0

PowerBASIC v4.0

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