DOS ain't dead

I want add context help to DWED and looking for a free content about programming languages and OS.

What can i do:

1. Convert and adopt (to TP) FreePascal help for a few units (System and may be Dos, Crt) - question: is it allowed by license?
2. Convert this one book about i8086 assembler. (but this book don't impress me)
3. Try check, what can be extracted from archives about SPHINX C--
4. Prepare help about i8080 assembler
5. Write small help about CP/M API. (i think it is not urgent task, but DOS have CP/M compatible API)

So, need some external source of content, with open license (possible include it in soft).

What looking:

1. C language. Need description/texts about stdlib.h stdio.h string.h (hope it is enough)
2. Basic language. It is hard question - we have (minimum) 2 generation of this programming languge: line numbered (TinyBasic, MSX-Basic ... GW-Basic) and procedural (PowerBasic,QuickBasic ... FreeBasic/VisualBasic/SmallBasic), so will be nice to have support for various dialect.
3. Intel Assembler 8086 and great, TASM/MASM/NASM (etc) dialects.
4. Z80 Assembler (for me - the same as i8080 but have few extension)
5. 6502 Assembler
6. Amiga-family assembler (Motorola 680x0)
7. will be nice - modern ARM assembler
8. Any other programming languages (JavaScript etc).
9. ???

If somebody have ANY advises - WELCOME!
(I think, easiest case - C library description, but which one?)

Ambiguous task (with time) - try convert RBIL to my help file format.

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Make DOS great again!

Carthago delenda est, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.

> I want add context help to DWED and looking for a free content about
> programming languages and OS.

So you probably want short help texts about keywords only, not real books?

> 1. C language.

How about https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C_Programming ?

> 2. Basic language

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/BASIC_Programming

How different can the dialects be? I would expect that when you use
some keyword, it must be a dialect which knows that keyword. And that
the same keywords mean the same, even in different dialects

> 3. Intel Assembler 8086 and great, TASM/MASM/NASM (etc) dialects.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/X86_Assembly

> 4. Z80 Assembler (for me - the same as i8080 but have few extension)

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Z80_Assembly

> 5. 6502 Assembler

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/6502_Assembly

> 6. Amiga-family assembler (Motorola 680x0)

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/68000_Assembly

> 7. will be nice - modern ARM assembler

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Embedded_Systems/ARM_Microprocessors

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Embedded_Systems/ARM_Assembly_Language

Of course, level of detail varies a lot, but it is a starting point.

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FreeDOS / DOSEMU2 / ...

> I want add context help to DWED and looking for a free content about
> programming languages and OS.
>
> What can i do:
>
> 1. Convert and adopt (to TP) FreePascal help for a few units (System and
> may be Dos, Crt) - question: is it allowed by license?

I don't know for sure about the permission (it is a special case because manuals have been published as book in the past), but I think it will be ok.

As to the technical details, the RTL documentation is generated, so the imperial solution would be modify the generator (called fpdoc) to generate your helpformat directly

> > 1. Convert and adopt (to TP) FreePascal help for a few units (System and
> > may be Dos, Crt) - question: is it allowed by license?
>
> I don't know for sure about the permission (it is a special case because
> manuals have been published as book in the past), but I think it will be
> ok.

I tend to disagree on this. Books, that includes software manuals, are copyrighted works. You need a permission from the autor(s) to reproduce these.

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Forum admin

> I tend to disagree on this. Books, that includes software manuals, are
> copyrighted works. You need a permission from the autor(s) to reproduce
> these.

I have only one way - ask FP Team. Unfortenatly, my sub-net is blacklisted on FP forum ("Sorry, you are not allowed to register on this forum.Spamming"), i'll try connect in other way. Anyway, i'll not share till receive permit.

PS: For me, it looks like a little bit strange.

---
Make DOS great again!

Carthago delenda est, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.

> > > 1. Convert and adopt (to TP) FreePascal help for a few units (System
> and
> > > may be Dos, Crt) - question: is it allowed by license?
> >
> > I don't know for sure about the permission (it is a special case because
> > manuals have been published as book in the past), but I think it will be
> > ok.
>
> I tend to disagree on this. Books, that includes software manuals, are
> copyrighted works. You need a permission from the autor(s) to reproduce
> these.

I think you misunderstand. It is more like it is basically copyrighted but free documentation, but it sometimes get published. The publisher only owns the edits, and might even pay the documenter to do/help with it.

Usually there is some kind of gentleman's agreement that the edits can flow back into the public docs, but not be published elsewhere for a limited time (few years).

Doc sources contain copyrights like

% Copyright (C) 1997, by Michael Van Canneyt
%
% The FPC documentation is free text; you can redistribute it and/or
% modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as
% published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
% License, or (at your option) any later version.
%

which IMHO demonstrates that it is meant to be free (though god knows what a linking license is supposed to mean for documentation)

> > I tend to disagree on this. Books, that includes software manuals, are
> > copyrighted works. You need a permission from the autor(s) to reproduce
> > these.
>
> I have only one way - ask FP Team. Unfortenatly, my sub-net is blacklisted
> on FP forum ("Sorry, you are not allowed to register on this
> forum.Spamming"), i'll try connect in other way. Anyway, i'll not share
> till receive permit.
>
> PS: For me, it looks like a little bit
> strange.

Subnets get blocked as class C for an year when there is a spammer. The used bots can typically fake IPs on local subnets (often allowed on specially cable networks), which means that the chance that such spam bots pop up on a slightly different address the next week is very large.

The last reset was in september, which means that the spam activity was quite recent.

Many "new" TLDs are also blocked for email, because there are so many throw-away emailservers on them (and pop up and disappear daily)

Ok, with FP doc's is clean - "You are free to use the documentation sources as you see fit, as long as you mention where you got it from."

I think i'll write "This is a derivative work by DosWorld, based on FreePascal documenatation obtained with permit from FreePascal Team https://freepascal.org/docs.html"
it will mean:
1) this is FP Team work
2) added few my changes/bugs (i want downgrade this documenation to TP/BP level).
3) "with permit" - i am already notify FP Team, they - known about it, and they agree

Will be nice solve in the same way for a few C-headers.

---
Make DOS great again!

Carthago delenda est, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.

> Ok, with FP doc's is
> clean - "You are free to use the documentation sources as you see
> fit, as long as you mention where you got it from."
>
> I think i'll write "This is a derivative work by DosWorld, based on
> FreePascal documenatation obtained with permit from FreePascal Team
> https://freepascal.org/docs.html"

documenatation -> documentation
permit -> permission
from FreePascal Team -> from the FreePascal team

---
Forum admin

> > I tend to disagree on this. Books, that includes software manuals, are
> > copyrighted works. You need a permission from the autor(s) to reproduce
> > these.
>
> I think you misunderstand. It is more like it is basically copyrighted but
> free documentation, but it sometimes get published. The publisher only owns
> the edits, and might even pay the documenter to do/help with it.

I don't understand, sorry. What do you mean by "it sometimes get published"?

To clarify: I was talking about software manuals (incl. online help) in general, not about Free Pascal in special.

> Usually there is some kind of gentleman's agreement that the edits can flow
> back into the public docs, but not be published elsewhere for a limited
> time (few years).

What would be the reason for such a practice? Specifically the "not be published elsewhere" part.

> Doc sources contain copyrights like
>
> % Copyright (C) 1997, by Michael Van Canneyt
> %
> % The FPC documentation is free text; you can redistribute it and/or
> % modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as
> % published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
> % License, or (at your option) any later version.
> %
>
> which IMHO demonstrates that it is meant to be free (though god knows what

Yes.

> a linking license is supposed to mean for documentation)

Books can be found in libraries. Just kidding.

GNU FDL or one of the CCx licenses would probably be a better choice.

---
Forum admin

> documenatation -> documentation
> permit -> permission
> from FreePascal Team -> from the FreePascal team
>
>

Yep, this is one more wonderful hightlight. I saw it on video, this is shame.

PS: hmm... need add into dwed-todo's: add spellchecker.

---
Make DOS great again!

Carthago delenda est, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.

> GNU FDL or one of the CCx
> licenses would probably be a better choice.

GNU FDL is infamously bad, and depending on the options can be nonfree. Wikipedia went to great lengths to switch to CC-BY-SA. (By = attribution, SA = Share Alike (copyleft).) CC-BY and CC-Zero (like public domain) are also free. CC-*-NC (Non-Commercial) and CC-*-ND (No Derivatives) are nonfree (though better than default copyright without any usage conditions).

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l