4DOS to become freeware

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe Caverly
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe Caverly

Hi,
From the JPSoftware Support Forum, http://www.jpsoft.com/forum.htm,
message titled "Will 4DOS be free when 4NT 6.0 is released?"
4DOS replaces the traditional DOS command processor (COMMAND.COM) under
Windows 95/98/ME, MS-DOS / PC-DOS 3.0 or above, Novell DOS / OpenDOS 3.4
or above, and in OS/2 DOS sessions. Although we no longer actively sell or
support 4DOS, we've made the most recent version (7.50) available at no
cost.

Am I reading this right? Does this mean that when you
release 4NT version 6.0, that 4DOS will be offered as
freeware from your website?
Click to expand...

That's correct; it will be free, though unsupported for new users.
Existing
users will still be entitled to tech support.

- Rex
 
Joe Caverly schreef:
From the JPSoftware Support Forum, http://www.jpsoft.com/forum.htm,
message titled "Will 4DOS be free when 4NT 6.0 is released?"


That's correct; it will be free, though unsupported for new users.
Existing
users will still be entitled to tech support.
Click to expand...

It's not fair, now I'll have to downgrade from Win2k back to Win98... ;-)
 
It's not fair, now I'll have to downgrade from Win2k back to Win98... ;-)
Click to expand...

Look at it this way: After `Longhorn' and sundray other new file systems and
OSs, Windows will become some kind of (Bill Gates version) Unix based OS
anyway. Why now revisit the simple, humble, but powerful, COMMAND LINE
sooner, rather than later?

How many menues does it take to make a brand new sentence or command?
Answer: Lots an Lots
 
Look at it this way: After `Longhorn' and sundray other new file systems and
OSs, Windows will become some kind of (Bill Gates version) Unix based OS
anyway. Why now revisit the simple, humble, but powerful, COMMAND LINE
sooner, rather than later?
Click to expand...

You're not joking. IIRC, Longhorn will indeed include an entirely
redesigned command line interface (in addition to the GUI, of course.)
 
Richard said:
You're not joking. IIRC, Longhorn will indeed include an entirely
redesigned command line interface (in addition to the GUI, of course.)
Click to expand...

I'd love to see Windows get all the goodie commands that UNIX has.
Somehow, though, Microsoft has a habit of vamping up their software,
only to leave out a feature that I really want. IE, for example, *still*
doesn't have resumable downloads.

It would be interesting to see if making Windows more UNIX-like will
make Linux redundant, or make Windows redundant.

It's a pity that many MS directories have spaces in them. It always did
strike me as a design decision that could bite them in the arse in the
long run. But in the end, I wonder how serious Microsoft really is about
scripting capability.
 
It would be interesting to see if making Windows more UNIX-like will
make Linux redundant, or make Windows redundant.
Click to expand...

Irony of Ironies -- Unix became GUI only when MIT developed X-windows which
was a bunch of software that ran on Top of the basic command line Unix OS.

Remember, what a bad bad idea it used to be said - was the fact that
windows 3.1 was not a real OS, since it ran on top of Dos?

It would be the logical move for Microsoft, like Mac to switch to a Unix
kernel to cut off the linux competition, and then make their Unix so
microsoft-specific (like miscrosoft Java) that lots of applications would only
complie and run on a true ``Microsoft Unix inside''.

But in the end, I wonder how serious Microsoft really is about
scripting capability.
Click to expand...

They have been quit serious, in a sense about scripting already: They
build restrictive version of Visual Basic into their applications, such as
EXcel and Outlook so you can write script-like addons to `customize' and
add features to your application. Of course these practices caused some
of their worst security holes.
 
There are a lot of legacy win98se boxes out there that require
support, particularly in the business world. The vastly expanded
command and switch set of 4DOS vis-a-vis command.com allows for some
very powerful batch files that often make support a lot easier.
 
Irony of Ironies -- Unix became GUI only when MIT developed X-windows which
was a bunch of software that ran on Top of the basic command line Unix OS.
Click to expand...

A wise man once said: "GUIs make simple things simple, and diffuclt
things impossible". I work for a bunch of industrial engineers, and
their idea of an "application" is to customise an Excel spreadsheet.
I've tried to steer them away from it; so far without success.

For them, everything revolves around the GUI. Clients like
non-threatening, pretty-picture interfaces, because, God forbid that
they would actually have to think or /learn/ something. The problem is,
though, that when you get into something more heavy-duty like
mathematics, you really do have to have some conceptual understanding of
what you're doing. GUIs can't save you from that.

What you end up with, and I've seen this in one of my old companies too,
is an elaborate, difficult-to-remember, GUI. They would have been many
many times better off using some kind of embedded language. In the minds
of clients and managers, though, GUI == easy, scripting == hard. It's a
fixed synaptic pattern, set in concrete for ever more.
 
For them, everything revolves around the GUI. Clients like
non-threatening, pretty-picture interfaces, because, God forbid that
they would actually have to think or /learn/ something. The problem is,
though, that when you get into something more heavy-duty like
mathematics, you really do have to have some conceptual understanding of
what you're doing. GUIs can't save you from that.
Click to expand...



In teaching days, I often compared the one or more commands on a command line
to the sentence in english: Command line options, pipes, redirecting input and
output and similar features -- make up the, sort of, `words' of commands.

As in english it is possible to construct completely new `sentences'
(commands) that you have never heard to said before, from their component
words, and grammer rules for combining words and parts.

Gui's do not allow for this general creative possibility: How many, and
what `menus' would it take to create the sentences you say in an average
conversation?

To add insult to injury, bitmapped GUI interfaces are not even necessary
for menus: The Lotus and IBM style menues, used in older 25 x 80 screens
worked as well as GUI menus, and did not clutter the screen with all the
parent menus as you negotiated a tree down the option you wanted.
 
howard schwartz schreef:
Irony of Ironies -- Unix became GUI only when MIT developed X-windows
which was a bunch of software that ran on Top of the basic command
line Unix OS.

Remember, what a bad bad idea it used to be said - was the fact that
windows 3.1 was not a real OS, since it ran on top of Dos?
Click to expand...

The "Windows 3.1 OS" consisted of DOS + Windows. The problem with Win 3.1
was mainly the weaknesses & restrictions in the underlying MS-DOS system
(which had no decent multitasking support). The problem was not in the
GUI.
 
X-No-Archive: yes

The "Windows 3.1 OS" consisted of DOS + Windows.
Click to expand...

I thought Win9x also is built on DOS, MS-DOS 7.0 to be precise, though
explicitly not installed separately as in the case of W31.

So, IMHO, it must be the gui that is deficient.
 
Ardent schreef:
I thought Win9x also is built on DOS, MS-DOS 7.0 to be precise, though
explicitly not installed separately as in the case of W31.
Click to expand...

Yes and no, Win9x needs DOS to start and for some of the hardware support,
but it includes several 32-bit replacements for the old 16-bit operating
system functions in DOS (e.g. memory, IPC, multitasking, hardware-support).
Once running Win9x uses only a small part of the underlying DOS anymore.
So, IMHO, it must be the gui that is deficient.
Click to expand...

The GUI isn't really top quality by current measures, but that's probably
because it's very old now... ;-)
 
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