[Coco] Why DECB is important to OS-9 folk.

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

Willard Goosey wrote:
>> From: "Stephen H. Fischer" <SFischer1 at MindSpring.com>
>> Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 00:19:29 -0700
>
>> John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
>>>
>>> But you look back at the great hot selling coco programs, and what do
>>> you find? CocoMax and its successors, a few word processors, and various
>>> games. The fact is that users don't care much about tools, by and large.
>>> They (can you believe this) actually want to *do something* with their
>>> computers.
>>
>> You have hit a nerve with this.
>
> It has been an adventure tracking down the major OS-9 apps.
>
>> Perhaps starting with the Tandy released ones. There are many on line
>> right now, some hidden in zip files and DSK images on RTSI.

I should have inserted some lines.

Considering the files that appeared on Delphi and CompuServe which are on
RTSI.

>> Most all do not expose any more information about themselves except their
>> names.


The Delphi file system had one line descriptions and longer ones which were
usually good as they were prepared by the authors. CompuServe also.

The Tandy ones never appeared on Delphi as far as I remember and their
descriptions were in ads.

> Arrgh, matey!  If ye're gonna pirate the software, ye can't be whinin'
> about the lack of docs!  Shiver me Timbers! ;-)

>>>> If OS-9 just booted to a menu with a BASIC-09 environment ...

That was in what I replied to. I concur and add that the other OS-9 stuff
needs to be available. There must be a lot of attractive items in OS-9 to
make the effort by a DECB person even get started. You and others may
differ.

>> That idea would place the user in a protected environment that all OS-9
>> error messages are translated to DECB error numbers if possible.
>
> This would be an improvement?

Yes. If a DECB person saw an ERROR 190 they would not understand.
Not even if " 190 INTERNAL INTEGRITY CHECK - System modules or data are
changed and no longer reliable" was shown. How long would it take for them
looking in the OS-9 Technical Reference to understand. I using my knowledge
of OS-9 understand right away. There are many more. Yes they do not happen
very often but when they do I understand and further know what steps to take
immediately to save my work in progress. How about a 210 or a 217?

We OS-9 folk have a content to place new things in to understand them
quickly. The DECB folk may not have that content, some will of course.

I started building up my Computer and Operating System content some time
around 1965. When OS-9 appeared I had a content to put it in and had a short
learning curve. Not everyone is on that learning path.

Translating to DECB error codes allows them to understand using their DECB
context. Starting with a limited environment allows them to learn and do
more at their pace, not requiring a very large body of knowledge to be
understood before doing anything.

> Willard
> --
> Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org

I am thinking about a new two parts. A new shell and a program that handles
the DECB running of programs. That program would be mainly for the DECB
folk, but it is mostly done already.

The shell would be used to make OS-9 a more friendly environment for them.

Think about the "DIR" utility. It's output could be filtered by the shell
for DECB folks.

But then, let me digress. Our "DIR" utility is showing it's year of creation
a lot today. Suppose one of our OS-9 people said, I would like a new "DIR",
can I try? We say sure and respond with a link to a 6809 Instruction
reference. Silence then happens.

What if the "DIR" command was updated just fine. Then the same could be done
with "MDIR", requiring about the same amount of work. And perhaps some
others.

With the new shell we could put in a lot of stuff for us, perhaps the
largest part. A table viewer could be created which could display the "DIR"
and "MDIR" output in columns and provide the sorting on any column.

That is a text file operation doable my many more people using "C",
"BasicO9", "Pascal" and so on. Not needing to be done in Machine code at
all.

Other file viewers could be built to display other files. I have a list of
them from "Lotus Magellan" which was built about the same time using an
eight bit CPU. MSDOS 3.3 or higher.

What if I am wrong and the DECB users that I am suggesting are causal
Computer users are in fact very knowledgeable computer users that do not see
in OS-9 what they see in other computers that they are using. OS-9 to them
may not be what they expect in an operating system, not because they think
it is too hard but because they see it as too lacking.

I really wish that someone would take me up on the offer of the trial
version of "Lotus Magellan" and see all the simple things that we can do to
make OS-9 better just for us who are using it. We are so proud of out OS,
but it needs some paint.


Stephen H. Fischer