Subject: Re: [Free]DOS port?
From: Dan Stromberg (strombrg@nis.acs.uci.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 07 2001 - 12:14:07 CST
On Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 01:31:52PM -0500, Kenneth J.Davis wrote:
> "Michael Kallas" <michael.kallas@web.de> wrote on 11/6/2001 11:14:41 AM:
> >
> >Hi,
> >
> >I'm new on this list and wanted to know whether anybody tried yet
> >to port AbiWord to plain DOS or whether this seems to be plainly
> >impossible.
> >I'm quite interested in FreeDOS activity and, well, this would certainly be
> >a "killer application".
> >
> >Best regards
> >Michael
> >
> >-- michael.kallas@web.de
>
> I think it is possible and probably not too difficult (not to be
> confused with easy or possible to do quickly) if you limit yourself to
> more modern computers (386+, VGA+, 4/8/32/? MB ram). The hardest
> part is supporting printers. Of course since DOS has no native support
> for windows, multithreading, or printing (ok sorta) then all that would
> have to be written (or use existing libraries). I believe DJGPP, Allegro,
> etc could be used. One of my initial reasons for following abiword developement,
> is that I would like to port it to DOS. If (a big IF) I ever get time,
> I will determine if it is actually feasible and if so possibly do it
> (though I don't plan on supporting printing initially - I rarely print).
>
> I am also not so sure about supporting plugins, but perhaps some of the
> code from seal would be helpful there. I have considered using seal,
> but I think it would require too much changing of the abiword tree to
> fit into its model (I could be wrong) and if done, I think it should
> follow all the other ports so changes to the XP code are easily integrated.
> And perhaps if done well, the DOS port could make it into the official
> abiword tree.
>
> I have played with abiword's code some, but I am still relatively
> new to it, and simply haven't had time do thorough research into the matter.
> Regardless, do not expect a DOS port anytime soon (unless there are
> others out there that I am unaware of - in which case please send me
> some email off list).
>
> Jeremy Davis
> jeremyd@computer.org
IIRC, DOS had a "print" command, with a lousy design, but functionality
not all that different from lpr, from the enduser perspective.
You'd probably want to port gtk+ to DOS, or use a framebuffer version of
gtk+.
You'd also probably want to cross compile.
I agree, plugins don't sound doable.
-- Dan Stromberg UCI/NACS/DCS
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