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Re: Dosemu practically full-screen


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