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I built a windowing manager that works! It doesn't use an offscreen buffer nor does it use page flipping. It uses the clipping idea. If I have windows overlapping the one that needs to be drawn to it simply scans x and y of the window for blank box areas and sets the clipping routine to that area and draws the graphic (but only in the clipped area). I can't believe how well this works! It seems to be faster than any other method i've ever seen, and to think MS-Windows has been doing this for years (until newer releases). Now im about to tell you guys something that will make you sick.. im using PDS 7.1 to program this in. It's the newest version of QBasic, a well known language that most people cut down just because it's BASIC syntax. The fact is that once this GUI is programmed it will be aimed for FreeDOS (and others). I know this isn't the board to post this but maybe a few will find it interesting. It would be nice to code it in C or Assembly but I needed a quick high level language to test my ideas and QB was the choice for now. To say the truth, im tired of all the GUI's out there. None of them get the job done besides Windows 3.1 (9x and newer are OS's, not GUI's). Linux has X but DOS has nothing worth using and I hope to find my project doing everything Windows 3.1 can in the near future.
L8r, Kg.
Hey, could you send me the source code (if its in protected mode)? I'm really kind of stuck with vesa, bankswitching, and stuff in protected mode.
Thanks
I agree, making something like windows 3.1 would be a pretty big accomplishment
Even thought you're writing it in Basic, you could transfer the same algorithms to C later if you wanted. Once you've got the principle working in one language, changing languages isn't hard.
It's in real mode (the GUI it's self) and everything else is stored in XMS if needed via DOS's himem.sys.
I will translate the algorithms to C once I learn it very well since my own source code is still above my head! lol. Thats what happens when you stay up all night with caffeine, you make code that is so good that once you wake up later you forget how the hell you made it all!
I hope to make my OS soon and impliment these ideas into the OS, or at least build a GUI environment for someone elses OS since there are tons of GUI based OS's out there already.
It doesn't use an offscreen buffer nor does it use page flipping. It uses the clipping idea. If I have windows overlapping the one that needs to be drawn to it simply scans x and y of the window for blank box areas and sets the clipping routine to that area and draws the graphic (but only in the clipped area). I can't believe how well this works! It seems to be faster than any other method i've ever seen, and to think MS-Windows has been doing this for years (until newer releases). Now im about to tell you guys something that will make you sick.. im using PDS 7.1 to program this in. It's the newest version of QBasic, a well known language that most people cut down just because it's BASIC syntax. The fact is that once this GUI is programmed it will be aimed for FreeDOS (and others). I know this isn't the board to post this but maybe a few will find it interesting. It would be nice to code it in C or Assembly but I needed a quick high level language to test my ideas and QB was the choice for now. To say the truth, im tired of all the GUI's out there. None of them get the job done besides Windows 3.1 (9x and newer are OS's, not GUI's). Linux has X but DOS has nothing worth using and I hope to find my project doing everything Windows 3.1 can in the near future.