Re: Ada Tutor Web Site Shutting Down

[Rugxulo <rugxulo@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On May 13, 7:03 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> "Rugxulo" <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:c31b2969-0e79-44c6-b351-77e1adeb3406@z13g2000prk.googlegroups.com...
>
> >On May 11, 7:45 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> >> "Rugxulo" <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >>news:291504a4-ec55-45f1-bf7f-13078bf71c3e@m10g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
>
> >> >On May 5, 4:12 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
>
> >> The biggest problem with it is that the DOS extender we used didn't work
> >> with NT and afterwards. (It actually works precisely once, then you have
> >> to reboot before it will work again. Not very practical.)
>
> >Was it a special homebrew one or one of the popular ones licensed?
>
> Dunno if it was popular, but it was licensed. Something called "Ergo"

Fairly popular, I've definitely heard of it, but I don't have any
experience with it, personally. There are so many extenders, all with
quirks, even ones that stick to the DPMI "standard". Hence, I'm not
surprised that using one extender (even built-in to the OS) works
better than separately.

> No, I meant reboot. The extender does something to the global selector map
> such that subsequent runs fail. It's possible that XP would work better (I
> never tried it on XP),

Doubt it, 2k and XP were almost identical in most ways re: DOS
emulation. You'd have to ask the resident DJGPP expert (CWS) if he
knew anything about it. Unlikely he remembers that far back, but he
seems to know all the quirks of DPMI vs. WinNT! But if it's a bug in
NTVDM, there's no chance of fixing it.  :-(

> When I reported the problem to the vendor, their response was to go out of
> business. :-) Of course, we didn't have to spend any more money on
> maintenance after that, and since it worked great on Windows 95 and 98, we
> continued to use it well transitioning to all Windows. Once we moved most of
> our desktops to Windows 2000, we moved the development to Windows itself. (I
> think we were pretty much the last DOS customer we had anyway.)

It's sad to me that modern Windows can't (or won't) run any older
stuff like OS/2 or DOS binaries (or even Win16) anymore.

> I don't want to have to learn a new interface every couple of months, which
> is the Google approach to software. (We can move buttons around anytime we
> want.) Sadly, people like Firefox are trying to copy that brain-damaged
> approach.

Unity? Gnome 3? KDE 4? MS Office ribbon? It's like people can't wait
to invent yet another "better" (but incompatible) way of doing things.

> >Though I wonder at using such an old editor, but I know people like
> >what they like, so I can't complain.
>
> Reasons: familar (to me at least) keyboard interface, no mouse fru-fru,
> optional rectangle marking (great for editing text in columns), find/replace
> in any selection (including rectangles), list view for find (shows all
> matches at once, great for finding stuff when you aren't sure what you're
> looking for), convinient macro facilities (by recording).
>
> I'd build a replacement using Claw and Ada if I had time, but I wonder if
> the result would really work as well.

Nah, you can probably find a good existing replacement. Most people
would say just use GNU Emacs or VIM. Even JED, JOE, FTE are all good.
Personally, it sounds like the one I use might suit your needs, and
it's even portable and p.d. See TDE : http://adoxa.110mb.com/tde/index.html