Hello: This is my first post here so a BIG THANK YOU to everyone developing DOSBox 😀 !

INTRO:
Thank's to DOSBox I am now remembering my Turbo C/Borland C (and even gwbasic!) programming days, and some legacy code. I'm now seriously considering using DOSBox as a fast prototyping platform for some old code on several devices (including an ARM Raspberry PI).

The idea is quite simple: I need a nice interface for some datasources, so in dosbox.conf serial section I've added :

serial2=nullmodem server:localhost port:5000 transparent:1

Then I can use (ex) "$ nc -l 5000" and "echo hello world > COM2 " on localhost to enable app communication/access to external servers. Besides serial communication, a server on localhost can then write to a file in dosbox main folder (using rescan for filesync).

If I want to use dosbox as the main system interface everything seems to work perfectly (questions 1d and 2 is however interesting/concerning). However, while developing, I have two main concerns.

QUESTIONS:
1. Is it possible to have a less intrusive/more generic mouse interface?
I know CTRL-F10 grabs/frees system mouse, but:
a) Could we have a command ("mouse free|grab") that would do the same?
b) What about touch screen interface? It would be great to interface/plugin to bios in low level, even for keyboard (something a litle bit more advanced than the keyboard mapping).
b1. I can start programming a TSR based on interrupts (ex. http://homepages.ius.edu/jfdoyle/c335/Html/Chapter9.htm ), however I would feel much happier if that code could be added as a plugin to DOSBox.
c) 1b could be particularly interesting if we can leave other TSR programs (remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick ? ) in some protected area, for interfacing (ie. hacking)/improving/using old games.
d) could 1b be relevant for http://www.litchie.com/?page_id=123 ?

2. How safe is config -securemode?
a) I am particularly concerned with bugs in my borland C code, namely because (a long long time ago), I've managed erase FS while working with bios and interrupts (since then I make backups regularly 😀 ).
b) It would be nice to mount a folder in readonly and having some other temporary forlder for file storage (side effect: this would also solve the filesystem "security" problem some are still reporing on the net. first in google: http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/ … 524/Dosbox.html
c) How safe are DOSBox users from virus (and dosbox aware) trojans? (eg. any news since Dosbox security hole in programs.cpp ?)
d) Can I format a folder if I boot with an old Linux distro? Didn't(I didn't try, but it would be a fun test to boot dosbox on linux, and have a sandbox linux command line, that could even run on my iOS 😉 , but this is probably less interesting for DOSBox community, since we have qemu or other visualization software).

I have (not yet) worked into DOSBox source, yet I would like to have the right path if I start working in this project more seriously.

Thank you again for the excellent Software DOSBox has become, sorry for so many questions and thank you in advance for any reply,
Nuno