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Re: Dosemu practically full-screen



Rafe,

If Andale looks like the Dosemu VGA font, then I'm pretty sure Andale is
not loading in your Dosemu session. Assuming Andale's installed and
available to Dosemu, and you used one of the settings below, my best
guess would be that there is some sort of font conflict, that you have 2
fonts uncommented in yr ,dosemurc file-- when this is the case in my
experience, Dosemu defaults to its VGA font. I won't clutter the list
with an Andale screenshot as an example, but will send you something
separately if you want.


Re the window title bar, in the Andale faux fullscreen, I get both the
title bar and Unity panel. To me that's not a big deal given the screen
real estate I have, but it could be an annoyance for someone else.
Andale just won't go fullscreen in a window the way the Dosemu VGA font
will, but it does go nicely fullscreen via Ctrl-Alt-F.


You clearly have more issues with compiz than I do; my one problem is
that I cannot get some keyboard changes to stick, and I don't know if
compiz is the source of the conflict or something else -- otherwise
things seem to run fine. But I don't use lenses so much, don't use the
cube, and don't use different workspaces -- though there have clearly
been some times when I would have benefited from the latter.


Paul
On 12/02/2012 10:41 AM, Raphael wrote:
Hi Paul -- I haven't been able to test this font as extensively as I'd have liked, partly because the last few weeks I've been upgrading everything to Quantal. Basically, under my system at least, when I invoke the Andale font in .dosemurc, it's generally impossible to tell the difference between it and out-of-the-box/unspecified VGA. The one time I can see a small difference is using the NVidia 173 driver under Precise but even then I'm not sure. My gut tells me that the, when it is installed, the Andale font is either the one dosemu uses, OR it very closely resembles the one default dosemu console font. I missed an opportunity to check when I installed Quantal on my netbook -- so here is a memo: if you happen to be installing Ubuntu from scratch, hold off adding the MS core fonts until AFTER you set up dosemu, and see how XyWrite looks with the various font choices. Also: I actually do not mind the window title bar, which I think is technically referred to as the Unity panel, appearing in fauxscreen. Its appearance in fullscreen, however is considered a bug & apparently it's a persistent one. This was never a problem in 10.04, but has since crept in -- the only time it really bothers me is when trying to watch a movie fullscreen. There is a workaround, I think it's discussed somewhere here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1848739 Altogether incidentally: the flickering cube bug with Compiz is what sent me from Precise to Quantal, and I think that's where I will stay -- Quantal is incredibly smooth (& flicker-free) and scarcely seems to consume any CPU cycles. In particular, for me, lenses are practically instantaneous compared with Precise. The difference is amazing on both desktop and netbook, but particularly the latter, where the system load seems 50% less. I guess it's possible that Precise might work better if I went back and started from scratch, and I may someday, since I am basically a Long Term Support version kind of guy. But the most recent entry in the "Compiz flicker" bug report is enough to worry me a little https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/862430 If the roadmap for Compiz/Unity didn't anticipate having all this sorted within a reasonable time period for the LTS release, that's kind of discouraging -- right now it's pretty messy. Then again, they might release a Precise fix tomorrow. -Rafe On 11/20/2012 06:31 PM, Paul Lagasse wrote:
Hi Rafe, I have a suggestion for (what I think is) a non-ugly scalable font for dosemu. In my .dosemurc file my font is: $_X_font = "-monotype-andale mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-140-160-m-0-iso10646-1" (I think andale comes with MS truetype corefonts package.) It's nice window on a 1440x900 screen, and scales nicely to fullscreen, if you are able to get to fullscreen. I played with the font size by changing "140-160" by increments of 10; the first number controls the horizontal aspect of the font and the second the vertical. The following setting: $_X_font = "-monotype-andale mono-medium-r-normal--0-0-180-170-m-0-iso10646-1"
--
produces a near-faux-fullscreen on 1440x900 with the Launcher set to hide; can't get ride of the window title bar though, unlike dosemu's scalable vga font. Tweaking "180-170" might get you something that works on your resolution, if you prefer the font and can abide the titlebar in "fullscreen." Paul On 11/19/2012 09:45 AM, Raphael wrote:
Hi Paul -- I've tested with all of dosemu's native fonts. Once upon a time in a search for the perfect dosemu I dug deep into some obscure website and downloaded & tried around a couple dozen fonts -- including, mistakenly, some modified Turkish ones -- but nothing came of it. The one that I like the most is vga11x19, which looks pretty good windowed and full-screen (when FS works, as in 12.04 with the NVidia 173 driver) and "bad" fullscreen, i.e., the screen surrounded by empty black space instead of text reaching the screen borders. All the other fonts are essentially unusable for me -- except, ironically, now the ugly default one, which in fauxscreen actually looks okay, it sort of reminds me of my 1986 Leading Edge monitor. I actually don't care for Unity 2D. I tried to use it on the netbook in the interest of conserving resources and found it was hardly more efficient; and the cube is very appealing to me -- for some reason, it seems to help me keep track of things in a way that simply clicking through virtual desktops does not. In any case, to answer your question, the font on this Lenovo netbook has mediocre-but-still-useable fullscreen Xy -- that is, good, crisp font, but with the big black border. (I think the first netbook I owned, an Asus -- back when they were reliable, four years ago, though I might get one of their tablets -- I could get a nice fullscreen Xy, but not on the next one.) The Lenovo uses an Intel chipset -- which is one of many reasons I have wondered whether the LinuXy Grail, a beautiful full-screen dosemu font, might be grasped by somehow getting into the xorg settings and specifying another bitmapped font -- or even designing one, but that's just a fantasy and a terribly-ill-informed one at that. I think your eyes must be better than mine -- but I also like having an all-black screen to shut out all other distractions, though with the Unity panel above it all, I still get a window onto the real (virtual) world. I have to say, having Xy as a cubeface feels really cool, in fact this setup is pretty close to perfection, but that's Linux. My understanding has been that xdosemu is preferable, and until this week I always used it. My dim recollection of what was once a very poor understanding is that xdosemu uses xterm "directly" while dosemu uses the default terminal emulation which I guess in Ubuntu is gnome-terminal, but you ought to consider that I scarcely understand what I just typed. -rafe On 11/18/2012 11:08 AM, Paul Lagasse wrote:
Rafe, I haven't had problems with fullscreen Xywrite but I tend not to use it because of the simplicity of moving back and forth between Xy4 and other programs when not fullscreen. Also, on a 19 in. desktop monitor, fullscreen really isn't nec. And, mostly importantly and probably deserving of mention first, I don't have an nVidia card, just Intel, so it's not a valid comparison. I tend not to use Mint currently because I'm heavily tweaked for Ubuntu since 10.04 (use quicklists a lot for quick access from several related programs/items from one launcher), but do like Mint. Also, in Mint, I've had some access issues on certain sites that want specific browsers; Firefox in Ubuntu was fine, Firefox in Mint not. What are your font settings for dosemu when you run into problems? (IE, other than dosemu's ugly base font.) And have you tried forcing Unity 2D for your 12.04 session -- 2D has its limitations, but if fullscreen is what you want, it might solve your problems. Yr comments re xdosemu vs dosemu with Nouveau intrigue me; I thought xdosemu was just a link to dosemu, and the dosemu under X (not in terminal and the like) and xdosemu were the same. (My launcher, just for reference, is "dosemu.bin xy".) Paul Lagasse On 11/17/2012 03:27 PM, Raphael wrote:
On 11/17/2012 09:36 AM, Jeff Seager wrote:
Rafe, I've not been using Xy within Ubuntu for some time, but have noticed the recent issues with nVidia drivers. I have Win XP on one partition, Ubuntu 12.04 on a second and Linux Mint 11 on a third. I alternate among these for various tasks. Linux Mint is stable and the nVidia drivers work flawlessly, while Ubuntu seems (as you say) to have had issues for about six months. Although I like the new Unity interface in Ubuntu, these issuesare moving me toward Mint. I'm just mentioning this to validate your point andsuggest a possible alternative.
I suppose I have drunk the Ubuntu Kool-Aid, but despite the problems I've had with 12.04 generally (not specific to XyWrite, mostly Unity/Compiz) I'm sticking with Ubuntu & Unity. For one thing, I just installed 12.10 on another partition, and it is working quite well. Plus I cannot say for sure that the problems I had with 12.04 didn't stem from a LOT of cruft left over from as far back as 10.4 and erm maybe even 8something -- and though when I installed 12.10, it took half a day to go through the list of all my old packages to strip down to the bare minimum, it was worth it. I don't think Paul Lagasse has had any problems using fullscreen XyWrite under Mint, either. I would never rule out going down a fork and saying sayonara to Shuttleworth who certainly at times seems a nutjob, but in the end, I am such a big fan of the lenses and HUD, things like the Amazon fiasco don't really bother me. I'm probably going to be in the market for a tablet in the next few months & the idea of putting Ubuntu on one is actually kind of exciting to me. In the interests of comparing notes, here are my experiences with dosemu/Xy and an NVidia GEForce 8400 under Ubuntu: A) Nouveau The Nouveau driver running Unity looks okay on my monitor -- not great, but perfectly acceptable. I ran it under this Quantal Quetzal (12.10) install for a couple of days, and basically thought it was sound until some things involving the lenses started to corrupt the screen. Moreover, under Nouveau, fullscreen dosemu is a big problem: 1) under xdosemu, going fullscreen shoots the entire session dead in the water -- the screen goes completely blank, and nothing is accessible in any way -- not by toggling out of f.s, nor exiting Ubuntu to a command prompt, nada. hard reboot. 2) however with plain old dosemu, even though the screen becomes unusable toggled fullscreen, it *is* possible to recover by toggling Ctrl+Alt+F back to the desktop. Particularly since after a few years of C-A-F'ing between Xy and the Ubuntu desktop the gesture is hard to get rid of, some unpleasant surprises have er convinced me launch plain dosemu instead of xdosemu. B) NVidia The only NVidia driver that has really worked f.s. for me is pretty old, 173 (they are up to about 310 now). Very handsome, fonts nicely customizable. Occasionally if I try to get into fullscreen I'd get a white screen instead -- but toggling back and forth fixed the problem. I have a Precise Pangolin (12.04) installation which was my day-to-day until I got fed up with Compiz weirdness -- that's the one I have been running with the 173 NVidia driver. When I have tried newer NVidia drivers, dosemu results have been terrible -- sometimes I get giant letters in an unusable Xy screen; and though I am able to toggle back to the Unity desktop, it usually is now displaying in something like 800x600 resolution instead of the 1920x1080. Installing the 173 driver is problematic under Quantal. I just now installed the 304 driver (they are up to 310, so theoretically this should be a ways back from the bleeding edge) and Unity looks altogether much nicer than with the Nouveau driver, and "fauxscreen Xy" is slightly crisper & brighter and seems more responsive, as does the system altogether. Hopefully this will be workable for the long haul. Rafe