analog_programmer wrote on 2023-09-15, 08:29:
opened two separate instances imageviewer and one instance of wave/media-player, and Xcom crashed to DOS prompt. Maybe the memory allocated by Xcom is not enough for such a tasks. I have 128 MB physical memory on this K6-233 machine, but I don't know if DOS 7.10 limits it usage to 32 or 64 MB through EMM386.
Could be. Unless you have changed the memory manager settings to use an internal allocator, it relies on djgpp/dpmi/dos to allocate the memory, and dynamically allocates the RAM with malloc/realloc/free. If you open the process explorer, you can observe the memory usage on the xcom process itself. If you see it crashing after reaching certain treshold, then its indeed due to the memory system. If the crash is not related to memory utilization, then it related to a bug in the code. Currently HDPMI32i.EXE and CWSDPMI.EXE can be used with XCOM. Last time i have checked it, neither of them supported swap files (despite cwsdpmi officially says it supports it - it doesnt) so swapping is not possible for now.
analog_programmer wrote on 2023-09-15, 08:29:
Also I don't know if you accept proposals for some changes in GUI part of the Xcom, but I have a couple.
I reading every proposals on Xcom carefully, and based on technical and ergonomic aspects, i decide if i accept an idea or not.
analog_programmer wrote on 2023-09-15, 08:29:
it will be more convenient if the submenus are activated on mouse hover instead of mouse click.
I intentionally did it like this way. I don't like if things randomly pop out as you hover around.
analog_programmer wrote on 2023-09-15, 08:29:
"Quit" and "Shutdown" in "(Start) Menu/Exit" do the same - exit to DOS prompt.
This system is designed for unix like systems, but so far only the dos version is available. Shutdown is supposed to turn off the computer by executing the command "halt", or "reboot" in the case you want to reboot the computer. If your system lacks these (and a pure dos lacks them) then it will simply quit from the software. Currently this is disabled under DOS. I am going to notice this proposal, and I am going to modify the code to call halt and reboot even under dos, but you will need to get a halt.exe and a reboot.exe in your DOS directory to get the desired functionality.
analog_programmer wrote on 2023-09-15, 08:29:
Also it will be nice if mouse right click works as left click on items of already opened by left click context menu.
I am going to investigate if this is technically possible or not.
analog_programmer wrote on 2023-09-15, 08:29:
I think, DOS version of Xcom has its potential to be something like better Win3.x 😀
For me, personally its already above 3.1 in functionality, but that's only because i developed in a direction which personally suits and fits my needs perfectly.
I hope i can extend the reliability and usability of the software to the point where other people will feel it better than 3.1.