SymbOS 3.1 released

[eto]

Awesome :-) I'm looking forward to V4.0

One thing I always wondered: would it be possible to use e.g. a 24K screen to get more screen space? Or can't you spare that RAM part? 

[Prodatron]

Unfortunately the CPC screen is always placed in the first 64K. And because of the way, how memory mapping/bankswitching works on the CPC, this is the most "valuable" memory for the operating system. Nearly every byte here is needed.
It's different for the Joyce PCW and the Enterprise, where the VRAM can be placed anywhere in the first 128K. Maybe I have a bigger screen on the Enterprise in the future, so this port won't look like a 1:1 Amstrad CPC clone anymore.

[GUNHED]

Unfortunately the CPC screen is always placed in the first 64K. And because of the way, how memory mapping/bankswitching works on the CPC, this is the most "valuable" memory for the operating system. Nearly every byte here is needed.
It's different for the Joyce PCW and the Enterprise, where the VRAM can be placed anywhere in the first 128K. Maybe I have a bigger screen on the Enterprise in the future, so this port won't look like a 1:1 Amstrad CPC clone anymore.

The VDP9990 of SymbOS could use this additional 16 KB of the main RAM too. It's just the question if this could be of any kind of help.

[zhulien]

A feature I would like to see in symbos is multiple desktops, e.g. press control+a number to instantly swap to another.  Still multitasking but it means we could eg put the music player in screen 2, console in screen 3 etc... perhaps a max of 8?  I would think this could be a good alternative to more screen space of course it doesn't address every issue.  Overscan would be great but I understand the difficulty in the cpc.  One thing you could try as a test, is to see what a 16:9 ratio screen might look like (adjusting crtc registers) and see if any of the zoom options in modern TVs accept the input and zoom it to full screen... of course the resolution will be lower, but it might be a good option for a full screen and combined with multiple screens would be great.

[zhulien]

Any chance for a version of symzilla that fetches pages?  At the moment I made 8bitology.net to generate 8bml, I could also make it generate dox pages if you have a spec.

[zhulien]

@Prodatron Any chance you would be happy to support a virtual browser-graphics card in Symbos?  I am happy to code the browser graphics driver bit, this would be sent from either a host and then connected to the CPC via http, or even symbos could send the JS (like the gfx driver) to the browser.  It would allow i.e. me to sit and use my PC to use Symbos on the CPC.  There would likely be initially, 

1. mouse:

position sending to symbos if we want to use the windows mouse to detect clicks and dragging (not sure how much we can spam symbos with drag events), or... we have a secondary mouse pointer we render that reflects the browser polling symbos and drawing a mouse pointer - I think the user experience for option 1 will be better

2. window drawing:

symbox responds to an API to draw lines, shapes and gadgets so Symbos shouldn't need much code change, the browser JS should perform the update.  We can try polling symbos... or check if we can use sockets as an option.

3. full screen mode: to open full screen windows into different tabs or windows - whichever seems to work best

This gives network card owners another use for their CPC network cards.

[Prodatron]

Any chance for a version of symzilla that fetches pages?  At the moment I made 8bitology.net to generate 8bml, I could also make it generate dox pages if you have a spec.

Yes, that's still on my todo list! As soon as I have some time for SymZilla again, I will add this for sure!

[Prodatron]

@Prodatron Any chance you would be happy to support a virtual browser-graphics card in Symbos?

Are you speaking about a proxy which preprocesses websites and send them to SymbOS (e.g. SymZilla or another app which supports this virtual browser format) in a less complex format?
Your description sounds more like a VNC viewer?

[zhulien]

@Prodatron Any chance you would be happy to support a virtual browser-graphics card in Symbos?

Are you speaking about a proxy which preprocesses websites and send them to SymbOS (e.g. SymZilla or another app which supports this virtual browser format) in a less complex format?
Your description sounds more like a VNC viewer?

Not exactly either but rather using the browser on a pc or other platform as a graphics card alternative. 

Like Siamese System on Amiga.  Javascript code in the browser gets primitive commands constantly from a real CPC via tcpip and renders the output in realtime.  

[XeNoMoRPH]

[GUNHED]

Nice. Can it print now on CPC too?

[Prodatron]

Yes, already works great

Even with WordPad in Wysiwyg mode:

[HAL6128]

Nice! A printer daemon or direct access?

[Prodatron]

It's the new Printer Daemon on which EdoZ is working again.
Applications like WordPad send their print jobs (with printer independant codes) to this daemon, which is converting it to printer specific codes and send it to the printer.
Sorry, the daemons UI appears only for a short time in this video, you will have a better look at it in the video two posts above. However this shows already an older version.

[XeNoMoRPH]

[XeNoMoRPH]

[XeNoMoRPH]

[XeNoMoRPH]

[eto]

Looks like an amazing game :-) 

[XeNoMoRPH]

[XeNoMoRPH]

eBooks (in SymbOS .HLP format) of classic public-domain literature small enough to fit on 180k disks: Alice in Wonderland, Aristotle's Poetics, The Art of War, Beowulf, The Call of the Wild, A Christmas Carol, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Hamlet, Lyrical Ballads, Plato's Symposium, three Sherlock Holmes short stories, The Time Machine. Also included are a 16,000-word English-language dictionary (derived from WordNet) and complete editions of the Bible in English, German, French, and Spanish.

Author: @prevtenet

download: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/929500634380660737/1191553353583431710/symbos-ebooks.zip?ex=65af1609&is=659ca109&hm=5eafb511ba1f27e47307ae2af3a8088920976eb08d4fb80e2de1247960a6600b&;

[GUNHED]

What's the special thing about this text format?

[prevtenet]

You can browser it pleasantly (e.g., with some minor formatting and an index) in SymbOS's help browser, which is actually a pretty decent e-reader.

[Prodatron]

This is really cool!
Here is the news post for the new eBook collection:
https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/news-events/read-full-ebooks-on-your-cpc-new-release-by-prevtenet
it includes a link to the new media file download section as well.

[zhulien]

Can someone do a test in SymbOS to see how fast it can send messages to a webserver?  Perhaps with 100 bytes to send and 10 bytes returned.  How many per second can be achieved without ruining the responsiveness of SymbOS.