Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
From: spooge@sizone.uucp (Cyberpolka On Da Jeep)
Subject: Desqview/X and Waffle 1.65
Keywords: desqview xwindows desqview/x
Reply-To: spooge%sizone@ee.ryerson.ca
Organization: Sonic Interzone, Atonal Hoodlum Subversion, TO Ont. 416-276-0552
Date: 15 Dec 92 05:55:58 GMT

Bounce by mail. Repost by mail.

> Wow. My host's sysadmin must be dead. News still doesnt go through my host
> without being dumped. I guess thats what happens when you get a free
> connection. Its a double bummer.
> 
> I am really sorry for asking about the % codes. I thought I did a good
> search on "%" but obviously I missed something. There have been over 15
> posts to CBW to tell me where to find it. (Static.doc) What a mistake.
> --------------------------
> Desqview/X
> 
> (Anyone else ever even USED it, much less with Waffle?)
> 
> (People who use the usual desqview might be able to help me, alot of the
> multitasking kludges to get Waffle running are probably the same.)
> 
> They had a copy of this at work lying around and never used so I
> took it home to try it out. I just got a 486/33SX (2.5x faster than my
> 386/25Cache) but just a few days ago my 486's main drive died. The 486
> now has the BBS drive from my 286 which used to run waffle.
> 
> Not having much space, I couldnt install Win3.1 to multitask the BBS
> until I replace the 80Mb ST4096 drive I lost to old age. Win 3.1 is too
> big. So I went for Desq/X which lives in about 5 or so megs, and its
> pretty nice. It uses an X Client/Server format interface and a real
> TWM-style window manager. The onscreen scalable ATM fonts are groovy as
> well.
> 
> 
> The good stuff about it:
> 
> High speed communications enabled gives alot of attention to busy comm
> jobs, so I didnt lose any speed with UUCICO
> 
> The virtual screen scrolling is a little small but very fast and leaves
> me enough room in 800x600 to have a window for me to mess around in Dos
> in and still see a full Waffle window where my users are.
> 
> The unix style process handling isnt too bad, and a TSR (dadorun.com)
> lets you add & to the end of your command line to start up a new window
> for the desired command. However, I wish it would start up iconified or
> let you specify how it starts. As of now using & (or using "run
> [command]") will start up a new window, run the command and leave you in
> that window in DOS. Double ungood for spawning stuff from Waffle where I
> cant make the window close itself and return to the parent where Waffle
> lives.
> 
> Smartdrv seems to work with Waffle on my 486 for some reason and I find
> it far better than Hyperdsk (mebbe I didnt read about Hyperdsk enough).
> The background writing is very nice, and it worked under desqview/x or
> not. I used to have a ton of trouble with Smartdrv on my 286, but then
> it's not 386 compatible.
> 
> 
> Bad stuff:
> 
> Me typing into the Online waffle window in chat seemed to drop some of
> my typing chars. The setting for "X Keyboard Collision Handling" or some
> such advanced feature didnt help when set on 0 through 4 (all the
> available settings).
> 
> I dont know much about Desq/X but no matter what I did I couldnt get
> external programs to work too well with it. I needed to give waffle
> something like 320K minimum in its set window to run. The largest
> windows I could open were about 400K.
> 
> The only way to get Wafmail to work was incredibly long and bizarre and
> involved starting up new processes; tho they didnt seem to startup
> right, it worked. If you want to know how, mail me and I'll tell.
> Running it the usual way gave some Runtime error which said that there
> wasn't enough environment space, tho the dos window was started with a
> new COMMAND.COM with a large environment setting. It didnt work without
> it either.
> 
> For RNEWS and RMAIL, however, this method didn't work and no matter what
> I did RMAIL would give an "ABORMAL PROGRAM TERMINATION" and not send my
> mail out to UUCP or Internet delivery - it did show up in my
> SPOOL/OUTBOX however. Anyone know what I could do to get it working? I
> couldnt get new tasks to behave properly without leaving themselves a
> window open, or not knowing where the redirection (rmail < file thing)
> was coming from or just forgetting about it entirely whenever I told it
> to spawn a new task.
> 
> I crashed desqview/x a few times whenever I played around with
> command.com executions and spawning new tasks. Some of the resulting
> graphical display messes were amazing. :)
> 
> When I get my new 200mb HD I think I'm going to run OS/2.
> 
> /kc

Ken Chasse - Sonic Interzone, Toronto Ont. * Inet: sizone!spooge@ee.ryerson.ca
-----------                                                        -----------
"It's stupid, it's idiotic, it's inane, it isn't art, it's dumb, it's a ripoff
of American pop culture, and we live in a sad society that tolrates it."
                                                      - NIMROD