XFDOS/SLWM Readme File

This is the first version of SLWM and the XFDOS FreeDOS distribution.

XFDOS can be downloaded as an ISO CD image which needs to be written
on a CD and will allow you to boot from this CD. Since it is an ElTorito
disk, you cannot see any files on it when using Windows explorer.

You can also download the required directories (desktop,deskapps,usr)
to copy them to your C: hard disk drive. If you want to choose a
different drive, you will have to edit the "dop" files in the desktop
directory. 
After copying the directories to the hard disk call the appstart.bat 
file in the desktop directory to start SLWM. You can add this to your 
autoexec.bat file if you want to run SLWM on startup of your PC.
You could also make a bootable flash disk using these files. In this
case I recommend to also set up a RAM disk as with the CD version.

SLWM stands for small light window manager. It is a tiny desktop 
application which is based on FLTK and allows to start DOS programs 
by clicking on icons on a desktop. Since DOS is single tasking it is
not yet a real window manager, but the planned version for Linux will be.

There are three directories: DESKTOP, DESKAPPS and USR. In the DESKTOP
directory there are "dop" or desktop files which determine the
icons shown on the desktop and the applications to start when
clicking on them. These files can be edited with any editor. You
can make a new file to add a new application to the SLWM desktop.
These desktop files are based on the "Desktop Entry Specification"
used by KDE and GNOME plus other window managers.

To select an application click just once on the icons. Sometimes
a second one may be necessary. If you click on an icon and move it by a
few pixels, the application will not load, just the icon will be moved by
a few pixels. Try not to move the mouse when clicking on an icon.
The ESC key will exit an application immediately. Do not use it to
exit menus as you may be used to.     

The icons have to be in the XPM format. You can select icons
from the ICONS subdirectory or add new ones. If you specify no
icon, SLWM will choose a nut which is its default icon.

The DESKAPPS directory contains the applications supplied with
this distribution. This are mainly applications done with FLTK but
SLWM will work with any application, text screen based or other since
it terminates and starts the selected applications from the command line.
You can add your own applications which maybe anywhere on the disks.
Just setup a new "dop" file for these in the DESKTOP directory which
will make them appear on the desktop when SLWM is reloaded.

A "dop" file has the following keys:
Type= usually "Application" but can also be "Directory" for a file selection
dialog.
Name= the text below the icon.
Comment= the tooltip text.
Tryexec= specify the path to the executable or bat file.
Exec= the name of the executable or bat file.
Path= the working directory, SLWM will make this the current directory.
Icon= the icon to be used on the desktop for this application. Enter the
full path here.
You can add a drive to the Tryexec and Path entries. If you do not want SLWM 
to load immediately after the application has terminated, make a batch file 
which calls your application and enter a PAUSE line after the call of the 
application so you have to press a key before the window is closed.

There is also a USR directory which contains the fonts the applications
are using.

If you are running off a CD, sometimes an application causes an error by
trying to write to the C: drive which is the CD now. Please press "I" to
ignore this and the application will run. It seems that FreeDOS tries to
write to the CD when some applications are loaded for the first time and
then this message appears too.
When the CD boots, XFDOS will setup a RAM disk in XMS memory and copy files 
to it to make using the CD faster. The file setupdop.bat is called for that.
For most applications that write files a working directory is generated on 
the RAM disk. The driver letter of the RAM disk is stored in the xdrive 
environment variable. The size of this disk is currently 15MB.

SLWM is removed from memory after selecting an application. The exception 
is when calling the shell explicitly or some applications that SLWM calls 
internally. 
After the application has terminated, the desktop will be reloaded. 
This way all the memory is available to the application called. Since 
DOS is a single tasking system the desktop allows you to easily select 
applications to run but it will not convert DOS into a multitasking
system.

The batch file appstart.bat will call the SLWM desktop. This will write
the application to run into the doit.bat file which will be called
when the desktop terminates. After the application terminates the
appstart.bat file will start the desktop again. If you are running from 
a CD the DESKTOP directory and some files from the DESKAPPS directory 
are copied to the RAMDISK on startup to provide for a fast reload.

To exit SLWM select "exit" from the start button menu, not the "x" in 
the upper right corner of the window. You can then work from the
command line as you may be used from DOS before. To rerun SLWM run
APPSTART.BAT or A.BAT from the DESKTOP directory.

You can move the icons on the screen and the new positions will be saved 
when you exit SLWM from the start menu or run an application. If you are
running from a CD the positions will not be saved when turning the PC off.

SLWM will load the wallimg.png file in the desktop directory as its
background image. You can replace that with a different image if you like.
If you rename or delete this image file, the background will be in the
cyan color.

When selecting the Open file icon, enable the Preview checkbox to see
a preview of the files and images. You can run applications selected
or the editor and pdf viewer will be called for the files associated
with these applications. These associations cannot be changed yet.

Maintaining all included applications exceeds the time I have available.
So I included some appliations which I just ported to DOS and got them 
to run while some issues remained. 

Several applications will allow you to enlarge the window by pulling 
the lower right corner to the desired size.

Antipaint or a-paint has been ported from Linux and will save BMP, PNG, JPG
and XPM files OK but not read JPG files again. The file open dialog will
not allow to change the drive. When running from a CD you can only save files
in BMP format.

When running MPXPLAY you can press F1 for a help menu. There is a MP3 file
for testing in the C:\DESKAPPS\MPXPLAY directory. Press Alt-F1 to select
the C: drive if MPXPLAY shows the files on a different drive. MPXPLAY
supports only a limited number of sound chips so it may not work on your PC.

To run Dillo you first have to install the proper packet driver for your
network card. In the start button menu there is a "Settings" item which
allows to select an "Internet Connection" submenu. There you can select
the "Load paket driver" item. This will allow you to run NICSCAN which will
try to determine the type of network interface card for you. Make a note of
the result and select the proper paket driver from the following menu. If no
network card could be found SLWM will proceed to the paket driver selection menu.
After selecting the paket driver from the menu SLWM will unzip that and load 
it for you. The SWSVPKT entry will call an already installed paket driver when 
testing in a Windows XP DOS box. The menu can be scrolled if the selected 
screen resolution does not allow to display the entire menu. Press ESC if you
do not want to select a paket driver to install and run.

Then you can run TCPINFO from the menu which may take a while to get an
internet address via DHCP. If there has been no paket driver loaded 
successfully before running TCPINFO this program will crash! 

Or run ping to see if the connection is working. Not all sites will respond 
to a ping, e.g. www.google.com wont but www.google.de will.

Then run Dillo. If you cannot use DHCP edit the WATTCP.CFG file and enter 
your IP address. Do not try to save files or web pages to the CD drive.

If an applications crashes it may cause the mouse may to hang.
You can usually continue after pressing the ESC key which will 
reload SLWM. XFDOS will currently just work with a standard 8bit mouse. A newer 
16bit mouse will result in incorrect mouse movements. 

In general the hardware of the PCs in use today differs a lot and FreeDOS 
and XFDOS will have problems with certain hardware.

29th July 2012 Georg Potthast
