Ros-dev November 2007

ros-dev@reactos.org

24 participants
36 discussions

Trying to push ideas (again:) )
by Alexandru Lovin 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Hello everyone, Aleksey suggested that I discuss this here, on the mailing list. First and foremost, these are enhancements to do for later, much later (what I would want for the next release is support for RAID / SCSI controllers). But I know that a developer doesn't actually keep something in his plans unless he's figured out a way to do it. I will paste and add additional comments to each of my suggestions. 1. Compatibility with every version of Windows, from Vista until Windows 3.1/ 3.11 That means applications written for 3.1 should work flawlessly on ReactOS, just like apps written for any other Windows. This is probably not hard, as at least XP does the same thing. However, drivers for Windows 3.1 most probably do not work. If the user actually has hardware that was left unsupported since 3.1, he should be able to use it. The same goes for the combination Vista-only driver / old Windows '95 or Windows 3.1 application. oiaohm said it's not really possible because VxD drivers are not well documented. So, maybe in the distant future, maybe when Linux devs will have reversed VxD's on their own. Just don't forget this. 2. Compatibility with DOS** This will probably not mean DOS drivers, as probably any hardware with DOS drivers also has some sort of Windows drivers. It would only mean application compatibility. However, applications with direct access to hardware will probably have to remain used from within DOS (e.g. BIOS update software). The major thing are games here. The ideal way to run DOS games is: - anything requested by the game is interpreted and passed on to the ROS API - Glide commands are interpreted and passed on to OpenGL or Direct3D, resulting in maybe a better image quality, via the use of features OpenGL has and Glide doesn't. - software rendering requested by games should be interpreted and passed on to OpenGL or Direct3D, again resulting in a better image quality. Of course, this will probably result in a compatibility layer, like you suggested. - redbook audio commands should be passed on to ReactOS, who will read in analog mode or digital mode, depending on what the ROS global settings are for that specific optical drive. My own thing about Descent, quickly: the game tries to access file " 1.midi" but ReactOS plays "1.mp3". I have all the mp3's and will provide them whenever needed in order to make this happen. This will transform the old Descent for DOS in the CD version, that had redbook audio tracks. Such enhancements were also created for Tomb Raider 1, by Paul that created Glidos ( www.glidos.net ). Please see http://www.glidos.net/retext.html?lang=en and http://www.glidos.net/audio.html?lang=en Whenever Tomb Raider 1 asked for certain textures / audio data, it was "hijacked" or "redirected" to the better textures or audio files. Certainly, this DOS compatibility layer would probably need a Glidos-like application to control various specific settings from various DOS applications. Another DOS related thing would be a command prompt (terminal?) in ReactOS that has drag'n'drop, copy and paste functionality. Still oiaohm: for the distant future. Got it, understood it, I just want to convince you to keep it in your plans. oiaohm even said a compatibility layer already exists. 3. Processors as a devices, in Device Manager * * For example, let's say a PC has a Pentium 4 at 3 GHz, with HyperThreading. Windows XP reports this processor as two identical ones in Device Manager. ReactOS should also do that. Apart from Windows, if the user does a right-click on a processor as a device, in the Device Manager tree, and chooses the Properties page of the processor device, that page should also mention the SPEED of the processor. More than that, it would be a blessing to also see the L1, L2 and L3 cache size, FSB and multiplier, like those SiSoft Sandra / Everest applications report. Maybe even further, the instruction sets supported - MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, etc. oiaohm again: can be done, but not right now. Stability and usability beat extra information. Got it, too. Bug 2644. 4. Clustering I discussed this with oiaohm and he said it's doable, as soon as ROS gets Active Directory Server. Only clustered in terms of processing power, the user has more machines in a cluster and he still sees ROS the normal way, it just works faster because there are more processors available. No hard drives in some sort of JBOD, and 3D data is only handled by the "master" machine(otherwise you need about 10 GB/sec between machines), the one the user actually interacts with. This is what he said would be the limitations. I have other details for this, but since it's very far away, it wouldn't make sense to bring them up right now. 5. Driver extraction tool I already got one, DoubleDriver, that backs up the drivers for devices in the device manager. I was thinking about the hardware that only gets drivers from Windows Publisher (like my MSI Starkey 2.0). Users would need one. Again, oiaohm said replicating a freeware tool is not high on the list. I'm fine with that. 6. A Windows Media Center equivalent **WMC doesn't do much. Just lists program schedules, can do scheduled recordings, is able to duplicate streams so that you may record whatever you're watching. It stops suddenly while doing a "record once" capture, when it should have waited for the user to say stop (it happened on Vista Home Premium, on a HP laptop). It has a "touchscreen" kind of interface, that would probably be great on an actual touchscreen, works ok when using a PC remote control, but is kind of stupid when using the mouse. It can record from one channel and let you watch another channel if you have at least two TV tuners in your computer. Naturally, ROS should do this with "n" TV tuners. It doesn't have composite or S-video capturing, like the vast majority of TV tuner software out there. It only captures in Microsoft's special "Microsoft recorded TV Show" format, extension .dvr-ms I think (no AVI capture, no mpg capture). It won't let you specify how the tuner provides sound from the antenna/cable signal to the sound card (PCI audio, internal cable, external cable, and if any of the last two, what sound card channel it is). While watching, it should be easier to find out what channel you're on, and what the time is, via some sort of OSD (on-screen display) that appears when you move the mouse or something, just like in WMC. The recording should not be affected by this (i.e. the OSD shouldn't show up on the recording if you moved the mouse, again just like in WMC). While watching, it's not possible (or at least not easy) to jump directly to a specific channel, it may only be used as a TV (next channel, next channel...). If the user tries to switch channels while recording, he gets "warning, you're recording, if you switch channels it's going to stop, you want that?" It should just stop, or at least let the user specify that he doesn't want to see that message again somehow. It doesn't let the user specify exactly the framerate, video size, video standard...just the country of origin. And, as an example, Romaniaofficially uses the PAL D standard on "air" broadcast, that you can get with an antenna. But cable providers use PAL B, which is the German official standard. So, in WMC a guy with cable from Romania must say he's from Germany or else he won't hear anything! All of these should be properly implemented in ReactOS Media Center. Apart from them, "ROSMC" should have all the deinterlacing options and deinterlacing-method autodetection routines from Dscaler. That program also offers a whole lot of other image improvement things, like a good enough TV station logo killer and image de-noising that actually works. Even better than Dscaler, REMEMBER the settings the next time the user runs the program. Maybe also provide the user with basic video editing functionality, meaning most of the features from VirtualDub (the one I find most important is the ability to edit a film with "direct stream copy", meaning it just copies the video and/or audio stream, it doesn't re-encode it. Edit as in cutting parts of the film. In this scenario, the ability to go frame by frame is also very useful). And since it's the Media Center and not the Media Player, this should be the application that rips audio cd's or audio dvd's. Most of all, it should be "cluster-aware." Regardless of ROS being cluster aware or not, this one should be. oiaohm said this is not your job, but a job for other projects. He pointed me to MediaPortal. I e-mailed all of them (Virtualdub, Dscaler and MediaPortal) but I doubt they'll combine the three projects. Still, that's why John User still buys Windows. Linux is all over the Internet (docs all over forums, drivers all over sites, applications all over sites as well). Instead, Linux has "cool" stuff like "mousespedometa" (measures the speed with which you move the mouse). Some people don't even have Internet to get what they need (X servers, for instance). To be a Windows alternative, it should contain a lot of things Windows has. 7. Running on 16-bit systems like 286/386/486 in a "ReactOS Essentials" (equivalent to a stripped-down XP) mode * * It should be the same operating system, but in 16-bit mode only. That's an ideal scenario and I'm sure it cannot be done no matter how good the programmers are. So, what can someone do on a 286 ? Listen to mp3's ? No way. Listen to audio CD's, yes, and hopefully digital playback, too. Watch TV ? Yes, if the user can find an ISA TV tuner (ATI made such tuners, but they required a PCI ATI video card, and if you have PCI why not get a better tuner?). Record TV shows ? Not on that kind of computer. Browse the internet ? That may be possible, with some really outdated, 16-bit browser, like the Internet Explorer for Windows 3.1. And I don't know how many sites will work on it. Play games ? Yes, either old DOS or Windows 3.1 ones or the ones that come with ReactOS, written in 16-bit especially for this mode. Join a hive as either master or slave ? Hopefully it will be possible, but probably in the year 2015 at least. Use office applications ? Sure, if the user can find that last Microsoft Office or maybe Microsoft Works version compatible with Windows 3.1. Run a web server ? I know a guy who had a server running on a 386 system, on Windows 3.11. So yes, it is possible, only I don't know what software he used to actually serve the data. Act as a router ? Again, hopefully. That is, if the entire network is on 10 megabit, because I don't think there are ISA 100 megabit network cards (ISA bandwith is not enough). 2D graphics ? It was possible in Windows 3.1, why not ? Maybe the first Photoshop versions actually were 16-bit. 3D graphics ? The first 3D Studio Max (that is, 3D Studio) was for DOS only. That probably means 16-bit right from the start, and that should mean yes, you can do it, with the DOS compatibility layer. Web design ? If you can find a 16-bit application, yes. A separate ReactOS for 16-bit only, or just all the 16-bit functionality included in the normal ReactOS ? Things look better when it works out of the box, but it's a waste of space to include applications written for 16-bit only. People that really need the 16-bit version will not mind paying extra attention to actually download this one and not the normal one. Besides that, ReactOS is free. And the presence of such a version would mean a selfless devotion to people. An act of charity for real. Allowing people to use their computers and do as many modern things as possible on them. An open source Windows 3.11 with better compatibility and adherence to standards. Compatible with all the 9x and ME. Has been tried in Free Win 95, oiaohm said "dead and staying that way" about it, but maybe VxD documentation and whatever else you would need will appear (or be reverse engineered by someone). Once a bigger effort will be done, the missing info is probably easier to uncover. Those are my suggestions. They are not for now, they are not easy to do, etc. Just don't discard them, please. Alex

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Re: [ros-dev] Autogenerating compiler specific .def files
by Aleksey Bragin 03 Dec '07

03 Dec '07

Marc, I think I haven't been very clear on this. What I mean, is that the .spec format already includes *everything* needed to produce either gcc or msvc-format .def file. So no point in creating yet another format. Nothing more nothing less, that's what I ment. I'm glad to hear disadvantages of that way. WBR, Aleksey Bragin. On Nov 24, 2007, at 7:01 PM, Marc Piulachs wrote: > >> There is absolutely no need to invent yet another format for storing >> export functions. It was invented once by MSVC, it was invented by >> GCC/MinGW, both are incompatible, it was invented by Wine to have >> ability of easy functions stubbing. Should there be another invention >> of the same wheel by ReactOS now? > >> If GCC/MinGW wouldn't be that *strange*, it could stdcall-fixup, and >> then properly link, this way .def could be created in the lowest >> common denominator format. > > That's the problem I'm trying to solve..:) The point on this change > is not > really store them in xml inset of plain text, is not that > important, for me > there are two reasons, first declare this information so rbuild can > manipulate it as objects and apply checking , logic , whatever ... > and the > most important store the information on a neutral , compiler > agnostic and > rich format that allow us to generate (export to) ANY format we > desire out > of it. Currently def files are tided to mingw which is bad. > > At the end the information must be there so what's the difference > between > having it in a file with extension .def or .spec and having it on a > file > with .rbuild extension? IMO It's not reinventing the wheel > > /Marc

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ros-diffs] [cwittich] 30916: revert r28932
by James Tabor 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Hi! That is why I hate CONTAINING_RECORD! It is so cheesy! Thanks Christoph, James

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Re: [ros-dev] [ros-diffs] [cwittich] 30899: remove the const from the DrawShadowText function to be compatible to PSDK
by Steven Edwards 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

On Nov 29, 2007 11:04 AM, <cwittich(a)svn.reactos.org> wrote: > Author: cwittich > Date: Thu Nov 29 19:04:38 2007 > New Revision: 30899 > > URL: http://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?rev=30899&view=rev > Log: > remove the const from the DrawShadowText function to be compatible to PSDK Please send this on to winehq. Thanks -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

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Re: [ros-dev] [ros-diffs] [cwittich] 30829: translated some DPRINTs from GreatLordish into a human readable format
by Ged Murphy 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

Cwittich wrote: > - DPRINT1("Warring no dxg.sys in ReactOS"); > + DPRINT1("Warning: dxg.sys not found\n"); The 'warring' returns, lmao, brilliant :)

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Re: [ros-dev] [ros-diffs] [jimtabor] 30807: Revert 30780 for gdibatch. Size, space and time are very critical in here. If you dont know what your are doing? Do not play in here.
by Aleksey Bragin 27 Nov '07

27 Nov '07

How come size, space and time matter in this particular case of where the variable is declared (it's still defined in the stack, wherever you write it)? In the kernel, there is a rule to allocate all variables at top of the function (not in subsequent {} blocks). It should be extended to win32k too, it's cleaner, gives the developer an overview of all vars used in the function, and prevents possible cases of defining vars with the same name both atop of the function and in some subsequent block of code. Not to mention this is not fully correct to do in a C language. With the best regards, Aleksey Bragin. On Nov 27, 2007, at 4:14 AM, jimtabor(a)svn.reactos.org wrote: > Author: jimtabor > Date: Tue Nov 27 04:14:38 2007 > New Revision: 30807 > > URL: http://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?rev=30807&view=rev > Log: > Revert 30780 for gdibatch. Size, space and time are very critical > in here. If you dont know what your are doing? Do not play in here. > > Modified: > trunk/reactos/subsystems/win32/win32k/objects/gdibatch.c > > Modified: trunk/reactos/subsystems/win32/win32k/objects/gdibatch.c > URL: http://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/trunk/reactos/subsystems/ > win32/win32k/objects/gdibatch.c?rev=30807&r1=30806&r2=30807&view=diff > ====================================================================== > ======== > --- trunk/reactos/subsystems/win32/win32k/objects/gdibatch.c > (original) > +++ trunk/reactos/subsystems/win32/win32k/objects/gdibatch.c Tue > Nov 27 04:14:38 2007 > @@ -20,7 +20,6 @@ > { > PDC dc = NULL; > PDC_ATTR Dc_Attr = NULL; > - PGDIBSSETBRHORG pgSBO; > if (hDC) > { > dc = DC_LockDc(hDC); > @@ -40,6 +39,7 @@ > break; > case GdiBCSetBrushOrg: > { > + PGDIBSSETBRHORG pgSBO; > if (!dc) break; > pgSBO = (PGDIBSSETBRHORG) pHdr; > Dc_Attr->ptlBrushOrigin = pgSBO->ptlBrushOrigin; > >

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Paste service
by Sylvain Petreolle 27 Nov '07

27 Nov '07

Looking at bug #933 in bugzilla, I see the following paste : http://www.reactos.org/paste/index.php/37693cf/ It has been posted on november 14th and set to expire after 7 days. Today is november 27, therefore this paste should have expired. Kind regards, Sylvain Petreolle (aka Usurp) Je ne suis pas d'accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu'à la mort pour que vous ayez le droit de le dire. I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. - Voltaire Run your favorite Windows apps with free ReactOS : http://www.reactos.org Listen to non-DRMised Music: http://www.jamendo.com

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Re: [ros-dev] Autogenerating compiler specific .def files
by Aleksey Bragin 24 Nov '07

24 Nov '07

Theoretically extending this logic to infinity will lead to creation of a new high level language, stored in xml documents, parsing which rbuild generates source code in C or other language needed. :-). The thing is, .def is rather simple, .spec is a bit more advanced to include more stuff ("stub", what else does reactos use from it?). There is absolutely no need to invent yet another format for storing export functions. It was invented once by MSVC, it was invented by GCC/MinGW, both are incompatible, it was invented by Wine to have ability of easy functions stubbing. Should there be another invention of the same wheel by ReactOS now? If GCC/MinGW wouldn't be that *strange*, it could stdcall-fixup, and then properly link, this way .def could be created in the lowest common denominator format. With the best regards, Aleksey Bragin. On Nov 24, 2007, at 4:36 PM, Marc Piulachs wrote: > I wouldn't use .spec files for several reasons, first of all is > that it > violates the way how rbuild currently works. Rbuild reads xml > documents in a > custom format and produce different outputs depending on various > conditions. > IMO rbuild shouldn't be extended to parse anything else but > just .rbuild > files. > > Also, winebuild from the rbuild point of view is not different from > any > other compiler , so I think the problem is just the opposite , > rbuild should > use the information stored in it's rbuild file to produce the spec > file in > addition to the specific def file (it shouldn't be produced by > winebuild > anymore) as both files are required to compile wine module XYZ. > > Having the information in rbuild files has also other advantages, > the most > important is that it would allow us to use the conditional logic to > export > functions based on a given condition, for example hacks like > /lib/debugsup.rbuild won't be necessary anymore. > > I wouldn't fork winebuild. > > Regards, > Marc

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Autogenerating compiler specific .def files
by Marc Piulachs 24 Nov '07

24 Nov '07

Hi All, I have lately seen a big effort to make more modules compilable under Visual C , one of our current problems when building dlls is that our .def files are mingw/gcc specific not directly compatible with msvc or any other future compiler we may support. Currently we are using not very elegant solutions to archive compatibility with msvc like stripping some information from mingw def files. As Alex suggested I think it's a good idea to move that information to rbuild files and let rbuild generate full compatible compiler def files in the intermediate folder. The advantages are obvious. As I have little experience with mingw def files I would like to request some help from other developers to evaluate/validate my proposal. >From my research on the ros codebase I have found that possible variations: - CcRosInitializeFileCache@8 - FsRtlGetFileSize - @HalExamineMBR@16 - PsChargeProcessNonPagedPoolQuota@4=PsDereferenceImpersonationToken@4 - ConvertSecurityDescriptorToAccessNamedA=ConvertSecurityDescriptorToAccessA@2 8 - GetSecurityDescriptorLength(a)4=NTDLL.RtlLengthSecurityDescriptor - ??1type_info@@UAE@XZ=__thiscall_MSVCRT_type_info_dtor @15 - ChkdskEx=VfatChkdsk@24 My proposed syntax is as following and it should support all of the above cases: <exportfunction name="CcRosInitializeFileCache" ordinal="8" /> (required) (optional) <exportfunction name="CcRosInitializeFileCache" ordinal="8" mappedname="PsDereferenceImpersonationToken" mappedordinal="4"/> (required) (optional) (optional) (optional) <exportfunction name="GetSecurityDescriptorLength" ordinal="4" mappedname="RtlLengthSecurityDescriptor" mappedordinal="4" module="ntdll"/> (required) (optional) (optional) (optional) (optional) With this information rbuild will generate a modulename_gcc.def when you type "make" and modulename_msvc.def on the intermediate folder when you type "make msvc". Opinions, comments? Regards, Marc

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Re: [ros-dev] Autogenerating compiler specific .def files
by Aleksey Bragin 24 Nov '07

24 Nov '07

Hi, why can't .spec be used for this purpose (extended to support msvc files generation)? They are going to stay anyway for wine-shared modules. With the best regards, Aleksey Bragin. On Nov 24, 2007, at 3:04 AM, Marc Piulachs wrote: > Hi All, > > > > I have lately seen a big effort to make more modules compilable > under Visual C , one of our current problems when building dlls is > that our .def files are mingw/gcc specific not directly compatible > with msvc or any other future compiler we may support. Currently we > are using not very elegant solutions to archive compatibility with > msvc like stripping some information from mingw def files. As Alex > suggested I think it’s a good idea to move that information to > rbuild files and let rbuild generate full compatible compiler def > files in the intermediate folder. The advantages are obvious. > > > > As I have little experience with mingw def files I would like to > request some help from other developers to evaluate/validate my > proposal. > > > > From my research on the ros codebase I have found that possible > variations:

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Ros-dev November 2007