China DOS Union

There is indeed a publisher willing to publish the DOS book, and they said it could come with a CD as a companion. But what to put on the CD is a problem... because if copyrighted stuff is released together with it, I'm afraid...

As for the book's target audience, it should be aimed at all users, and should highlight several features of DOS: freedom, openness, and the GNU spirit; a large amount of new DOS software and new technologies; various functions (including multimedia, networking, etc.); the connection between DOS and WIN; as well as all kinds of DOS tutorials and configuration, and so on.

It will probably mainly explain the two most representative DOS systems, MS-DOS 7.10 and GNU/FreeDOS... At the same time, ROM-DOS and others will also be introduced in detail.

5. Multimedia items Forget the floppy; do your best to add CD booting instead (solve the drivers first).

Agreed!

No matter how the moderators do it, make sure I can buy this book in Shanghai too!

1. About the boot disk
1. Super boot engine project (I roughly understand what it means. For reasons everyone knows, MS－DOS has some defects, and since it's a big target, many attacks are aimed at it. If one can take an unconventional path, work around those defects, and stay compatible with it, that would undoubtedly be a great help for successful system booting.)
2. GUI interface program project (Not interested: people don't use DOS to make things look nice. Emergency rescue is one of its major functions, and personally I think the attractive part of DOS lies precisely in its black-and-white interface.)
3. Chinese character support system and software Chinese-localization project (This is a book! Do you understand that sentence? If you do, then you don't need a Chinese-localized version. The difficulty of English under DOS is probably only at this level, and knowing some English is very necessary. Otherwise you can't really talk about using computers, because you can't guarantee you'll always be able to use a Chinese environment. I've always used the English version.)
4. Generic hardware driver project (A CD-ROM driver is already quite enough; a mouse driver can be omitted too, the keyboard can replace every mouse operation, even under Windows.)
5. Multimedia project (No interest, never had any interest.)
6. LAN and Internet project (Don't know. I've only done Windows98-98 networking, windows2000-98 networking, and one unsuccessful diskless win98 network, so I'm really not familiar with networking.)
Summary: the boot disk should still focus mainly on emergency rescue!
2. About whether to make a first anniversary commemorative CD and book
…………

My view on DOS development is this:
It's impossible now for DOS to return as the OS on ordinary users' computers, because MS has already deeply entrenched WINDOWS in the hearts of ordinary users. In Taiwan, elementary school students start out learning WINDOWS; if you ask them what DOS is, they'll ask you back! And MS has also set up certification exams for its own products, such as Visual Studio and Office, MOUS being one example. Whoever gets such a certificate is practically guaranteed a job. These are all software products that run on WINDOWS, so who would still think about learning DOS, where you have to memorize commands??
Adding networking capability to DOS is a must, and it should also add server functionality like UNIX/LINUX and develop toward servers. In addition, DOS still has another area for development, and that is "embedded systems." LINUX is developing in that direction too, but I think DOS is more competitive than LINUX in the embedded systems field, because it is smaller and easier to learn~
As for a DOS GUI, personally I'm not very optimistic about it, because DOS already has a powerful and functionally complete GUI---WINDOWS 4.x. No matter how much a GUI is developed, it can't possibly be easier to use than WINDOWS 4.x, right...
If DOS can't develop well in these areas, then I think DOS will end up being only for professionals and academic research.....
The above are just some of my views. If there's anything inappropriate, please forgive me~

Hehe, it's not as if DOS necessarily has to be used by memorizing commands

DOS, this thing—you just need to learn how to "learn" it...
Nobody can know everything, but if you know how to learn, then you're not afraid of not knowing. If you don't know, then learn.
What you should be afraid of is not knowing how to learn.
The master leads you to the door; cultivation depends on the individual.
Once you've gotten started, it's fine...

Everyone is still talking in generalities. Aside from 站不稳会员, who put forward his own views on the specific issues, most people are a bit off topic.
I hope everyone can talk about the specific issues.
First of all, does everyone agree with the issues and proposals raised in the first post, including the boot disk and publishing a book?
If you disagree, please put forward your own plans and ideas.
If you agree, then please express your opinions on the issues and proposals.
If you strongly support it, then please sign up to take part in the actual implementation work.
As for the development of DOS, with our current strength we still can't do any major work. What we can do is still to promote DOS better. Everything should stay focused on reality. More concretely, let's talk about the next step of the work. We can't just shout slogans while marching in place.

Bumping this up, please actively post your opinions!!!

My opinions are as follows:
1. I think the book and CD still should be made. Publishers understand the market better than we do. If a publisher agrees to publish it, then they already have a certain degree of confidence in market sales. The book market has to be looked at from two sides. On the one hand, nobody uses DOS anymore, so there won't be many buyers; on the other hand, nobody is publishing DOS books anymore either, so that whole market is left to us. As long as the book we publish really meets people's needs, I believe it can still make money.
2. It definitely has to be an officially published book and CD. Expecting to get money from pirates is pure fantasy. We don't need to work on the piracy side at all; as long as what we make is good and has a market, they will come on their own, and you won't be able to stop them.
3. As for the future development of the Union, I also think development should be the focus. My suggestion is to specifically recruit a group of experts familiar with programming to serve as moderators or honored guests. They wouldn't need to handle the forum's basic management, but would instead be responsible for taking the lead in development or giving programming guidance to newbies.

As for the forum's current problems, everyone actually noticed them long ago, and they've been talked about too, it's just that we still haven't seen much real action.
Now that I have to reply anyway (the moderator has spoken, scary, hehe ^_^), then I'll say it once more, and be serious once more ^_^

As for boot disks, I think most people who want to use them to maintain a system have at least some DOS skills (otherwise even having a boot disk wouldn't help much). Actually, for people like that, a boot disk can be made or modified completely by themselves. My personal view is that boot disks are not all that useful. As long as some technical discussion can be carried out, that's enough. Or make a sample disk, mainly with strong functionality, and then explain its implementation ideas clearly. After all, the ideas are what matter most; not everyone is going to use a fighter plane to do the job . There's also another situation: if some software hasn't been used before, or people haven't even heard of it, then usually they won't use it, no matter how powerful it is. So in that sense, even if the tools in a fixed boot disk are very good, they still may not be useful. From that point of view, boot disks are not all that useful. Although I'm also interested in Boss W's boot disk, and have downloaded it, I've never used it (I've never even written it to a floppy). On the one hand it's because I'm lazy; on the other hand, if a machine has a problem, basically making a Win98 boot disk, deleting a few things, then copying a few things from another machine/CD is enough to solve it. There really is no need to use Boss W's fighter plane to handle my bottle-opening job ^_^.

As for CDU's first anniversary book and CD, they really do have commemorative value and collectible value, and I'm very interested. But normally we discuss things here, among a group of people who like DOS, so the reliability of our estimate of the market has to be discounted a bit. To decide whether it should be released, some small-scale market research is needed, or a small release as a test, or we should see whether the sales issue is to be handled by the publisher. After all, it was the publisher that invited Boss W to write the book.

As for the future direction of development, I've also made or replied to some posts about it, and I don't want to say much more here, because just talking alone won't really help.
As for:
2003-07-14 00:48:21 A Pine Leaf
Start with programming. Although our level still isn't good enough right now, we can take it slowly. Start with simple things. For the time being let the boot disk section hold things up. But our main energy shouldn't be put there anymore. The main effort should go into simple DOS software development, and we can also do some discussion of DOS programming. I don't think boot disk technology is going to make any breakthroughs now.
Actually, you can see it yourself: your MINWIN32 just isn't as popular as MSDOS71. To put it bluntly, users use boot disks to maintain systems.

I have some ideas of my own, just listen to them casually.
I very much support discussion and study of DOS programming; I think I said so before in one of my replies too. But it seems nobody has carefully talked about the method of discussion. My view is that the current posts are too messy and too mixed. The problem right now isn't the number of people, but the quality of the posts. So I think a special section should be opened, and only certain people should be allowed in. To qualify to enter that section, people should have to pass a certain assessment. There should be strict rules in that section: no matter who posts something unrelated, it should be deleted, even if it's a moderator. Of course there should be some other rules as well. A really good atmosphere for discussion has to be created. If a post has nothing to do with DOS programming, show it no mercy. (If that's the case, then there has to be some limit on what exactly counts as a post related to DOS programming; it would only work if there were a rough standard for judging it.)
One problem with this approach is that some forum users may be dissatisfied. Actually, that kind of section wouldn't be very useful to ordinary users anyway, but it would look somewhat discriminatory, and the moderators would have to communicate with them about that. Or ordinary users could be allowed to read posts, but not make posts or replies. Or discussion could simply be done some other way, without this sort of "class division," such as a mailing list or something like that. But I still think the forum is the better way.

I suggest everyone take a look here for reference, it's really good:
http://www2.zzu.edu.cn/ie/newdos/dispbbs.asp?boardID=11&ID=5304

I only have one purpose in learning programming: on DOS or windows I can do whatever I want, whatever I feel like doing.
There are too many unsatisfactory things in this world, and when I'm with windows, I feel relaxed and happy. Maybe I am escaping from life,
but I just like it this way.

Heh

Publishing a book + CD, or doing something else... if it's in Wengier's name, then there isn't much to worry about. But if it's to be in CDU's name, personally I think it would be best to wait a bit...
Actually it's really a matter of overall direction. Publishing a book should count as one possible path for a successful technical site, so when CDU makes its first public appearance, it should at least have a clear line of thinking, a main direction of attack, and also lay groundwork for future books.
But looking at the posts above now, I always feel as if the moderators still haven't thought through clearly what CDU wants to do in the future...

I think a technical research group should be set up first. At the very least, technically we need to stay ahead of others, and it can also unify CDU's current technical research direction.
As for technical level... I think what's more important is the environment. Skills improve. If everyone is willing to come and stay at CDU, then what can't be overcome?