WARNING: is MS-Novell going to stop us ?

Here you can discuss ReactOS related topics.

Moderator: Moderator Team

Are you scared about the P.C.A. ?

Err... heeeelllp meeee !!!
4
10%
F*ck them all !
37
90%
 
Total votes: 41

cppm
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed May 02, 2007 10:03 pm

Post by cppm »

Well, personally i don't like the MS-Win software installation approach; i'm an Haiku fan and i like their approach: unzip'n'run. No installation.

WAAAYS better !
God forbid if an application needs user registration/component registration/menu entry addition etc etc...
Reacter
Posts: 326
Joined: Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:57 pm
Location: Tornado Alley

Post by Reacter »

Sometimes it is nice to have quick access to stuff: example: Windows Plug'n'Pray(TM). When it works, I don't have to screw around with the control panel, and I save 10 minutes to ~2 days (for a major problem.). @Forart: why do you think that there is an "Open with..." dialogue on IE 6 and FireFox? So you can unzip the file quick and run it.
More ReactOS, please!
bobsobol
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:59 pm

Locations

Post by bobsobol »

I currently have Windows XP installed to the Location C:\SBIN, making the shared 32-bit system libraries C:\SBIN\System32... my biggest pain, but I have that Junctioned to C:\lib.

My Profiles are stored in C:\home, I keep all temporary data in C:\tmp, and all installed applications default to C:\bin... does this sound familiar to anyone?

I have C:\man, C:\share, C:\dev, C:\contrib, C:\download and C:\ftproot, C:\pub and C:\wwwroot all point to the same drive.

Yes, all my drives, Hard, floppy or optical are mounted somewhere under C:\ which I treat like a *nix "/" root. ;)

It's not hard to do. Most drives are mounted in several places, not least of which being C:\dev\hda, C:\dev\ide\0\0 etc type locations.

Yes $temp$ and $tmp$ point to C:\Temp, but so does the registry. I have mounted several block devices directly from "\\.\" addresses, and mounted an entire drive as my main user profile... All "RECYCLER" folders / Directories on my system are also linked to C:\tmp.

This all makes perfect sense to me. If we can't do away with drive letters, lets at least mount all drives under the one letter. <shrug>

I can confirm that compatibility is limited very little by this. Most problems arise from programs written in Visual Basic... usually Versions below 6. It does happen a lot with 16-bit applications that assumptions about system folders locations are made... the other big culprits are "Games", and not your PopCaps flash games, but the big commercial ones. Stuff that effectively mount a virtual drive in your filesystem to "speed access to the graphics and sounds that make our game so amazing" when actually if you crack the code of the "virtual filesystem" and store the files in their native form on an NTFS or e2fs system the game runs faster.

Again, it's more often the installer than the program which baulks at weird directory structures than the Application it's self, so a temporary hard-link / junction usually does the trick, if not, a little post install reg-tweaking, or binary hack on the exe will finish it.

Speaking of which, API calls to the filesystem are easily patched... even when you don't control the source to the OS. Don't Microsoft keep a huge database of [/i]"Application Compatibility"[/i] information to do similar tweaks automatically behind the users back?

So for compatibility, I presently have more problems with ROS not supporting ACLs in the file system than with my *very* *very* OEM'd Windows XP.

And I don't think you are getting the point Forart is making. I used BeOS (Haikus' predecessor) for a long time, and the standard is that if something needs registering (an context menu extension for example) then it's unzipped into the Context Extensions folder, either in the system folder for all users, or your users one if you just want it for this user... If a program is so complex that it needs to install context menus, thumbnail filters, lib.so's etc then it will have an install.sh bash script in the folder which you run right after unzipping, or is run by the program it's self on first execution when it finds stuff isn't registered.

We did also have the Software Valet which would install packages OS X style.

Windows programs can do this too, you don't just have to throw a complete wobbly and spew some nonsensical error message at the user when you can't find the font, dll, ocx or registry key you are looking for, you can just run a mini setup that fixes it and get one with it.

Unfortunately, that is all down to ethos, and the ethos of the Windows user and development community is not something that can be changed by a project like ROS. At least, not alone. If ROS were to develop a community of users and developers behind it with such an ethos, that could have a bearing on developers looking to write applications which work well on both ROS and Windows systems, and that in turn could knock on to die hard Windows users demanding such features as standard in all Windows programs.

Such was the power of the Amiga community of users and developers, who, like the Linux community at present, had a far closer relationship than do Windows Developers and Users.

If you want to make a system that isn't even at Beta testing stage yet better than the system it's attempting to "clone" then giving the user some control over how and what (s)he installs right from the get go would be a good place to start. Windows true starts by asking you if you want to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver on floppy disk (how many PCs still have floppy disks?) and then treats the user like a complete idiot from there until the end of the OOBE, installing everything on automatic. No chance for a change, no choice... Oh yea, I have to tell it that I'm British 15 times in different places, and manually correct the way it thinks I should use dates and times, but that's about it for customisation.

Hacking profiles, and user programs on to a different drive or partition to the OS, is a real nightmare after it's installed... where as if I could say that Program Files was D: Profiles E: and pagefile.sys (formerly 386smart.par formerly swap.bin or WHY) was on F: then all would be hunkey dorey and the whole system would run smoother. Way less background defraging or downtime for a complete system defrag.

Here's another idea, NT4/5/6 only enable compressed/encrypted files and ACLs on NTFS volumes, yet I remember using per-file background compression and encryption on floppies and the hard disk when all I had at my disposal was DOS. It wasn't even vFAT just FAT12 or FAT16. I had TSRs that managed the extra data. Meta data like comments could be stored in 4DOS and other programs in a DESCRIPT.ION file... utilise similar systems to allow ACLs and extended streams in FAT! We've all seen Macs do it with DOS floppies / USB Thumbdrives. The Resource Fork has to go somewhere! Right?

My point is that you can be, at once, less sophisticated AND better.

Microsoft still haven't gotten WinFS off the ground and yet Google Desktop Search comes pretty close to rivalling Apples Spotlight without using extended metadata in the filesystem. And, again BeOS was there long long ago doing it better than we have it today.

What happened to dynamic folders? They worked so well on Longhorn, I can't figure them on the final Vista and I'm back to saved searches.

How about a "Recycled Bin" which was actually a zip/7z/bz2 file storing all the information about trashed items in an archive. You can delete the archive if you want to empty the bin, and at least you've saved some space by throwing stuff in it.

There are a million and one simple things Microsoft forgot, and while we can add Context Menus and toolbars, widgets and docks to the existing system, it would be so much easier and nicer to build those into a system from the start.

The don't affect compatibility, because the extension don't, why would building them in? It wouldn't, it would just make them load faster, and take up less space by using shared code.

My hope is that the 0.5 new Explorer replacement will be based on "Calmira II" or Directory Opus, and begins (much like early Red Hat distributions) looking very much like Windows, but rapidly becomes apparent that it can be configured to be pretty much anything you want.

My 2 cents. ;)

Peace for now. :)
Phobos
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 10:50 pm

Post by Phobos »

(on a side note, that page with the calmira II info has a great collection of OS's GUIs images... pretty neat hehehe)
bobsobol
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:59 pm

Post by bobsobol »

hehe, yes it does. I've downloaded the source, and I'll see if it can be ported, at least to BCB for 32-bit compilation with a view to 64-bit.

Of course there are many alternative file managers, start menus, system trays etc.

You could easily use LiteStep or SharpE, but they don't include the file manager. A combination of the one or the other with something like Explorer2, Magellan or Directory Opus works well on Windows, but I don't know of a File Browser which is free and open source, that you could add to the repository.

Calmera has one built in, that is rather like Explorer, ;) if we (I include myself only as an interested party at this stage) had solid 32-bit source for it, especially if it were possible to build it on Open Source development software, like Free Pascal, maybe utilising Lazarus for the GUI, I think this would aid the cause considerably. I suggest FreePascal as it's probably pretty much as close to Delphi 1 as you are going to find in the Open Source world. I will try to port to BCB to get C++ source and see if I can't break out the VCLs from there to get something OS compliant.

One big issue is that Calmera doesn't have to contend with Explorer compatibility in terms of registering file associations, context menus, ActiveX band objects and the name space extensions. It doesn't have to, because those things don't exist in the 16-bit Windows world, so even if it provides only a little bit of that functionality, it makes Windows 3.1 more compatible with 32 bit programs running under Win32s than without it.

ReactOS' Explorer replacement would have to fully comply with WebView folders, name space extensions, band objects and context extensions in order to reach it's lofty goals for compatibility, as many applications provide these as standard interfaces to their operation. Not to mention Thumbnail Filters for custom image / video and document previews in thumbnail or Filmstrip views, and the decision to follow classic Windows 4-5 Explorer or the radically different Vista Explorer, or something different / in-between / configurable to either or beyond.

So, just to be clear, I'm not saying there is a solution already in existence, but simply that there are places other than Microsoft that we can turn to look for examples, and experiences to build upon.

The developers of both LiteStep and SharpE have expressed considerable pains with managing try icons (notifications) in all the different ways they are implemented in different programs.

There is much fun ahead people. ;) And 0.5 is a ways off I think, but I'm keen to help out with that part when the time comes... Right now it's still suck it and see. But I'd hope that whatever comes out, it will be able to look just like Windows, and be configured that way to start with, and have many options under the hood for modification without adding memory and processor intensive explorer extensions, or purchasing a replacement file browser.

This is where Open Source comes into it's own. It's Burger King software... for those of you who don't know the chain, the slogan was "You want it your way? (at BK) You got it!"

The power of ReactOS will be that if you want to design a STB which plays DVDs or whatever through a snazzy Local Bus interface that reads directly from the decoder chip which has it's own access to the drive, and doesn't require the drive data to go into the machines memory, out to the decoder and back in in decoded form (for example) but you'd like to run Outlook for TV eMail and such as well, you can re-write kernel drivers for your snazzy BUS in ReactOS. You could slim the OS to a near MicroKernel, or embed the whole thing on a PROM... methods of distribution and types of modification Microsoft would never allow. Again, even if it look and feels exactly like Windows, a clone, that still leaves it better. Because the licence, and the ownership, is really yours.

The ability for OEMs to be more creative, is there, the power to end users to say "NO! Actually, I don't want Internet Explorer, or Outlook Express, or NetMeeting, or... I'll write my own TYVM!" is there with Open Source. The power of security freaks to say, "I'm tired of patching RPC every week, I'll just re-write it without bugs. Or at least with bugs I will know how to fix myself when someone finds a way around it." is there. It's better, because it's Open.
Reacter
Posts: 326
Joined: Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:57 pm
Location: Tornado Alley

Post by Reacter »

On my system, I have deleted IExplore.exe from every place I can, killed all it's apps, killed it's DLL's, and killed a lot of the IE crap that slows down the system. My Docs and Sets path is C:\WinXP\User\, My Win path is
C:\WinXP, My CD's are at C:\WinXP\shiny, floppy is at C:\WinXP\meltydisk, my Program files are at C:\WinXP\funcrap.
More ReactOS, please!
bobsobol
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:59 pm

Post by bobsobol »

That sounds more like a fun setup than a logical one, but it's gotta confuse hackers. Survival through diversification, sounds good to me.
Howitzer86
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri May 05, 2006 8:06 am

Post by Howitzer86 »

Yes.

When/if Reactos becomes useful and well known, Microsoft will sue the developers for patent infringement.

Software patents cover ideas, not actual code, therefore, the audit was pointless.



That said, I highly suggest that the developers and community remain anonymous.

It's likely that they will sue the domain name owner first. I did a whois and got everything I needed to send a cease-and-desist.

You can hide this information though, that's what I did. I go through Godaddy though, so I don't know how he would go about doing it with his service.
Z98
Release Engineer
Posts: 3379
Joined: Tue May 02, 2006 8:16 pm
Contact:

Post by Z98 »

You're assuming that MS will want to risk retaliation from god knows how many projects we're able to drag into the fight and whoever their corporate sponsors are.
Haos
Test Team
Posts: 2954
Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 5:42 am
Contact:

Post by Haos »

In other words: as we are closely related to WINE, any attempt to stop us could be assumed as a first step on assaulting them. So they could feel threaten. Then, as an open source project, we hope to attract FSF attention, as our loss would be a very bad example for the future. By involving linux community, we get their corporate sponsors involved, and they hold patents that could potentially and directly affect Ms products.

So when Ms uses their patents, IBM and others take out theirs. Mutually Assured Destruction scenario. In reality - a very stable situation, that may last for years. Look at the Cold War - it ended with disarmament, so i think it brings a little bit of optimism.
bobsobol
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:59 pm

Cold War! Ewww.

Post by bobsobol »

I remember the cold war, and I can assure you that there was nothing stable about it. It was incredibly scary.

No, I am European and very glad you can't apply patents to software. It would kill IT development completely if it were ever to be applied.

I hope, as you are suggesting, that if the red button was ever pushed in this cold war that there would be a disappointing fizz and not much else.

That is to say... Apple and Microsoft and Digital Research Amiga and IBM had enough arguments over who owned the idea of a trash can on the desktop (whatever it may be called) who could use windows that the user could reconfigure the shape of, etc etc.

This ultimately lead us to a situation where we were stuck with Windows because they ignored to courts and paid the fees, when OS/2 and GEM were forced to concede issues which made them technically superior to Windows as was, but useless to the user.

I would hate to see that form of trial by wallet again in the IT industry. Especially as much more of the worlds economy relights so heavily on it now than was the case in the late 80's early 90's.

I would ensure that your servers remain on European, Arab, or even Asian soil, and ensure that the conflict (should it occur) takes place on a world stage, not a US one.

As a non-US citizen, I feel that the people of the world have a right to a say on this. Microsoft may be a US based company, but their patents cannot apply to developing nations, who need and deserve IT infrastructure capable of interacting with western technology, but who cannot afford the cost of Microsofts' systems, or the skilled labour to maintain them or complex Linux systems... Budgeting sales to those nations is not only patronising but encourages them to profit by piracy, making our technologies and protocols unique to our western selves is a form of trade embargo which is utterly despicable.

There are now technologies for running Windows applications on OS X and Linux... (Wine is only one) There are technologies for running Linux applications on anything, because Linux is so open.

The idea that this world would allow this project to fail would increase my feeling that I do not want to live in this world considerably... I feel a revolution at hand. ;)

Additionally, I don't think this project will harm Microsoft in any way. I do feel it will increase competition in a positive way... much the same way as OS X increased reliance on OpenSource has. When the Kernel of the Mac OS became a custom form of BSD, developers can see the code that produces that vital security layer... Apple can keep their UI closed and well documented... but we feel safer to use the OS and expose it to the ravages of the net, because it is not just a hard core team of Apple developers working on securing that system, it is a world full of developers who have access to the code and can patch it at a moments notice for Apple.

If I were Microsoft I would be asking for an LGPL licence on ReactOS so that their OS could benefit from the code created here without loosing it's commercial status. But I already feel that buying a copy of Windows Vista doesn't mean you buy a copy of Windows Vista... it means you buy 3 or 4 years worth of automatic updates which allow your machine to react to the changing threats on the net. So long as ReactOS doesn't hook into Microsoft Automatic Update... I can't see that they loose.

Let's face it. Whatever any law says, anywhere in the world, if ReactOS comes up with a feature that people like, or a more efficient or secure this , that, or the other... Microsoft are going to use it.
davidp
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 5:09 pm

Post by davidp »

Howitzer86 wrote:Software patents cover ideas, not actual code, therefore, the audit was pointless.
The audit is more for copyright issues than for patent ones. Patents are applicable only on countries where they are registered, while intellectual property rights can be enforced in court wherever you want. Also patents are more prone to be invalidated due to previous art (of the idea), whereas copyrighted stuff (code) remains copyrighted in any case.
bobsobol
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:59 pm

Post by bobsobol »

I thought I'd written enough so I shut up, but the other point going around in my head was... Just what "idea" do Microsoft think they were the originators of in Windows?

DOS, Volume Letters 8.3 file names and such are CP/M, Directory trees were.... Unix? File Attributes are CP/M ACLs are IBM VMS & NTFS is only IBM HPFS with a different name.

Sockets and the Windows implementation of them is an adaptation of the BSD method. The TCP/IP stack came from VMS again I believe, as did most of the threading model and "Multi-tasking" mapping the task switching back the way Win3.1 did was only a rip off of DesqVue.

The window imagery comes for NeXT, the recycle bin and moving windows we have already shown to be Apples Idea. NE, LE and PE executable files, again came from VMS, and the original .COM files were 8086 translations of CP/M. The MZ executables were defiantly used on the Atari ST already, of course there isn't much point in suing them over than now but...

Most of the Standard windows libraries are very common in format to things that have gone before... You couldn't say the suite of applications that comes with Windows are even particularly original. At least, not if you ever used an Apple IIe (system 6) or an Acorn RISC OS machine.

The original GDI was based very much on Digital Researches VDI, using the NE/PE library calls instead of the classic Interrupt vector calls.

You could come up to date, and say GDIPlus is pretty unique, but in reality it is only attempting to bring GDI up to date with the abilities that other systems have had for some time. OS X, XFree86 and SDL and FreeType for example.

ClearType Font smoothing is about the only point I could say Microsoft had first... and they didn't by any means achieve that on their own... If we (ReactOS) simulated ClearType smoothing with Standard FreeType smoothing, the APIs would look the same, only you wouldn't need a specific setup of Flat Panel to see the enhanced smoothing.

VisualStyles was essentially embedding WindowBlinds into the system.... the list goes on and on and I completely fail to find a single "idea" which Microsoft demonstrated originally... They may have unique implementations, but their implementations will (by and large) vary from ReactOS'... and any similarity there is purely coincidental... except naming and calling conventions which are essential for compatibility.

No. I think if US courts want to push free and open speech and freedom of expression out of their nation... Not only is their constitution farther eroded, but they do themselves no economic favours either.
alex_farlie

Post by alex_farlie »

bobsobol wrote:I thought I'd written enough so I shut up, but the other point going around in my head was... Just what "idea" do Microsoft think they were the originators of in Windows?
DOS, Volume Letters 8.3 file names and such are CP/M, Directory trees were.... Unix? File Attributes are CP/M ACLs are IBM VMS & NTFS is only IBM HPFS with a different name.
NTFS is new in some respects...

Sockets and the Windows implementation of them is an adaptation of the BSD method. The TCP/IP stack came from VMS again I believe, as did most of the threading model and "Multi-tasking" mapping the task switching back the way Win3.1 did was only a rip off of DesqVue.
Threading existsed prior to VMS, and co-operative task switiching
IIRC was in RISC OS (1990) and hi-end Unix.
The window imagery comes for NeXT, the recycle bin and moving windows we have already shown to be Apples Idea. NE, LE and PE executable files, again came from VMS, and the original .COM files were 8086 translations of CP/M. The MZ executables were defiantly used on the Atari ST already, of course there isn't much point in suing them over than now but...
What about Xerox ?
Most of the Standard windows libraries are very common in format to things that have gone before... You couldn't say the suite of applications that comes with Windows are even particularly original. At least, not if you ever used an Apple IIe (system 6) or an Acorn RISC OS machine.
A large number of windows libraries ARE original in nature (for i386 at least), Relocatable linkable libraries have existed prior to DLL's though.
RM have been in RISC OS since Aurthur

DCOM may well be original to Windows, but builds hevialy on DEC Object Broker IIRC, CORBA was also a competing model when COM was orrignaly under development.
The original GDI was based very much on Digital Researches VDI, using the NE/PE library calls instead of the classic Interrupt vector calls.
Didn't GEM use intterupt calls? based on GSX?

You could come up to date, and say GDIPlus is pretty unique, but in reality it is only attempting to bring GDI up to date with the abilities that other systems have had for some time. OS X, XFree86 and SDL and FreeType for example.

ClearType Font smoothing is about the only point I could say Microsoft had first... and they didn't by any means achieve that on their own... If we (ReactOS) simulated ClearType smoothing with Standard FreeType smoothing, the APIs would look the same, only you wouldn't need a specific setup of Flat Panel to see the enhanced smoothing.
When did RISC OS get decent font types?
And didn't Acorn try to interest people in the technology back in 1988-89?
VisualStyles was essentially embedding WindowBlinds into the system.... the list goes on and on and I completely fail to find a single "idea" which Microsoft demonstrated originally... They may have unique implementations, but their implementations will (by and large) vary from ReactOS'... and any similarity there is purely coincidental... except naming and calling conventions which are essential for compatibility.
What about in terms of original ideas.?
- FAT
- Structured Exceptions.
- Clippit...
- Fractal Image compression (used in Encarta)
- Double Space?
- Multi dimension spreadsheet.
- Thunking (16-32 bit code linkaage)
- Windows on Windows
- JDirect.
- C#
bobsobol
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:59 pm

Post by bobsobol »

alex_farlie wrote: NTFS is new in some respects...
Granted... minor upgrades... NTFS 5 adds support for many standard unix ideas and WinFS (if it ever gets released) will incorporate BeOS' Extended attribute database lookup... Still doesn't make it an original idea. ;)
alex_farlie wrote: Threading existsed prior to VMS, and co-operative task switiching
IIRC was in RISC OS (1990) and hi-end Unix.
Indeed, but the particular model of threading and multitasking was what I was thinking of... again doesn't make it any more original on MS behalf.
alex_farlie wrote: What about Xerox ?
Or HP-IX? Win95 seemed to take a lot from both those systems in terms of presentation.
alex_farlie wrote: A large number of windows libraries ARE original in nature (for i386 at least), Relocatable linkable libraries have existed prior to DLL's though.
RM have been in RISC OS since Aurthur
And DLLs have existed prior to Windows... which is the point... Microsoft didn't even invent the i386 so transferring an idea from one architecture to another is not an original idea.

alex_farlie wrote: DCOM may well be original to Windows, but builds hevialy on DEC Object Broker IIRC, CORBA was also a competing model when COM was orrignaly under development.
Oh, now I don't know about that, but I do remember a Mac orientated article on how ActiveX=COM=DCOM was always about Microsoft being able to say "we have that too", but it just not being particularly taken up on Windows.

Perhapse someone could back up my ailing memory there and find the similarities.
alex_farlie wrote:
The original GDI was based very much on Digital Researches VDI, using the NE/PE library calls instead of the classic Interrupt vector calls.
Didn't GEM use intterupt calls? based on GSX?
Not sure about GSX but... sorry if I'm misunderstood, that was what I was saying. VDI was indeed, like DOS, an application level interrupt to a service routine which looked up the API in a table and jumped to the appropriate sub-routine.

alex_farlie wrote: When did RISC OS get decent font types?
And didn't Acorn try to interest people in the technology back in 1988-89?
I believe Vector Fonts came with RISC OS 1.8-2.0 with the elegant Type2(?) fonts... prior to which they relied on Adobe Postscript fonts like everyone else.

If you mean the font smoothing that was 2.3 or 3... but was done much better than Windows Font Smoothing and nearly as good as Apple Font Smoothing... Only you could get away with 256 colour depth... I think you could do it with 16 colour, but it wasn't as noticeable... could be wrong.
alex_farlie wrote: What about in terms of original ideas.?
  • FAT(CP/M, it's the same as any CP/M disk only with a special file type called a "directory". Besides, which other OS hasn't implemented FAT/vFAT file system drivers and wouldn't be up in arms at a patent on it?)
  • Structured Exceptions. (hmm, Well I could mention Guru Meditation, lines of Bombs, Unhappy Macs and Kernel Panic... actually that's just standard coding practice, but CPU manufacturers have made it more and more easy to implement. Most DOS4G stuff did it too.)
  • Clippit... (Oh God... Great... lets not implement Clippit. Actually I do not enable [or even install] the Microsoft Agent... he comes with Office, and though he is in XP, he isn't used till you install office or the blue wizzard or that darn monkey. Just don't implement Agent, let the user install it with Office if they really want it.)
  • Fractal Image compression (used in Encarta) (And many other image formats, it was supposed to be in Jpeg, but I've never seen it work... Jpeg2000? I hear in practice it makes larger files look worse than they do with wavelet compression... and Encarta isn't part of the Windows OS)
  • Double Space? (You mean Stacker... Microsoft put them out of business and forced their competitor SuperStore to be bought out by Digital Research... they didn't even PAY them for the code they stole and put their name on. There are other ways of viewing this that might be more politically correct, but I remember it, and was a paying customer of Stack Technologies for their Stacker product and gutted to find Microsoft giving it away for free... You could look at it just in a hex editor and see they hadn't even recompiled it from the source, just hacked their name in. In any case... old idea doesn't exist in modern Windows... but I did have a TSR which did file by file on-the-fly behind the scenes compression on DOS and there was Powerpacker and XPK & XFD libraries on the Amiga that are just like the Windows Encrypted and/or Compressed files in NTFS 5, aside from implementation. I think the Amiga one was better with it's modular and open source compression\encryption libraries. ;) What about RISC OS mounting !SparkPlug Archives like a new disc when you opened them?)
  • Multi dimension spreadsheet. (hmm... Does Windows come with a multi-dimension Spreadsheet? I know OS/2 2.4 had a spreadsheet with it when I bought it... I could access it with REXX if I wanted... Never seen one on Doze till I install OpenOffice or Lotus 123 though)
  • Thunking (16-32 bit code linkaage) (That was developed in co-operation with IBM and Intel, originally to get 16-24 bit code linkage)
  • Windows on Windows (What? WoW? That's just an Emulator / VM... Isn't Java a VM? I had Spectrum & Commadore 64 Emulators on DOS before WoW. What about SheepShaver that allows you to run Mac OS7 apps on an Amiga?)
  • JDirect. (Huh? What's a JDirect? Isn't that a MSDStudio App? How many users have that installed? I won't touch Microsoft development environments, I'm sure I don't have a JDirect on my Microsoft system, and suffer no incompatibility for it)
  • C# (C Sharp was a development of C++ and Objective C each of which were derived from C, it's object structure is based on JVM adapted to the Windows Object repositories and... again, it didn't come with any copy of Windows I ever bought.)
I'm not saying Microsoft aren't an innovative software company... I just don't find anything unique or new in their OS. Office has defiantly made unique moves, more so when it was competing with WordStar, WordPerfect Office, and Lotus Smart Suite than of late... but even so. Office does not come with Windows... and you don't need windows to run Office.

I say I won't use Microsoft Development software, but that's only because all their current versions rely heavily on .NET, which I think is jumping through hoops to achieve very little, and a re-invention of a wheel that Sun invented quite sufficiently with Java. IMHO

The original Visual Basic for DOS was quite revolutionary, and defiantly helped spawn BlitzBasic Amiga, RealBasic and so on. But what was Microsoft famous for before they released DOS for IBM?.... Microsoft Basic A. The world of Basic was pretty much dominated by Microsoft and Locomotive. Microsoft wrote IBM Basic, Commadore Basic the Basic in their own MSX systems, Amiga Basic and (I believe I heard) a Basic for the original Saga Master System... before they took out the disc drive and keyboard and released it outside Japan. Locomotive wrote the Amstrad/Schneider Basic, various extended Basic languages for the Spectrum and BBC, and GEM Basic on the ST.

This all dallies from the point. Microsoft Office, Microsoft Developer Studio and even Microsoft Flight Simulator are NOT standard Windows components.

We can look at VFW... that was quite a leap, but still based on an the AVI file type, which was/is an abomination of the IFF (Interchange File Format) standard that Apple QT and MOV files use and Amiga used as IFF/Anim and CDV Video CD files. VFW capture was a kind of rapid TWAIN grab if memory serves and the whole thing was more a case of Microsoft pulling together several other well used systems into one new one.

The Object Packager that is still around usually in Windows and was originally released with Windows 3.0 was pretty revolutionary... I remove it from my OEMed installs... and suffer no lack of functionality. It's great and unique and nobody uses it. :lol:

I have to say that DirectX and it's related software is the most crucial for compatibility and revolutionary... It is quite different from WinG that came before it and died rapidly, and OpenGL which was originally far superior, but is now lagging behind... The modular filter system of DirectMedia is quite original... Though "clone" systems have sprung up since it's inception. But DirectX is not implemented (yet) in ReactOS... though a download of the original Microsoft DirectX seems to work quite well.... Microsoft could well put a WGA lock on future download releases of DirectX which would make keeping up with that quite difficult... I would suggest an OpenGL to DirectX wrapper layer... but I think the Wine people already have that quite in hand. ;)
Locked

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Ahrefs [Bot], Bing [Bot], Google [Bot] and 43 guests