MyWindow plugin including CENTER

[Joe Caverly]

Hi @Charles Dye,
Thanks for the new CENTER verb in your mywindow.dll plugin.

Many of the programs that I run have been created using MS-DOS Programming languages,
and require a screen size of 25 rows by 80 columns to work properly.

With the new CENTER verb, I can now do;

mode con: cols=80 lines=25 && window center

before running my MS-DOS .COM or .EXE program,
with the window centred in my monitor.

Joe

Ref: Index of /dl
Ref: MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64

 

[Charles Dye]

That one is still kinda beta -- I found an embarrassing bug just yesterday. So let me know if you find any issues.

 

[Joe Caverly]

Will do.

Joe

 

[vefatica]

That one is still kinda beta -- I found an embarrassing bug just yesterday. So let me know if you find any issues.

@Charles Dye, how do you get it to be so small?

 

[Charles Dye]

I pack them with UPX.

 

[vefatica]

I pack them with UPX.

Interesting! You do take a performance hit at load time however. In pretty simple testing, the difference in start-up time was about 20% when TCC was loading these 6 plugins; on the average, .062 seconds vs. .05 seconds. I used to be a stickler for both size and speed but today, computers are so fast and disk space so plentiful that I don't pay much attention to either.

      File size         Ratio      Format      Name
 --------------------   ------   -----------   -----------
  169984 ->     78336   46.08%    win64/pe     4Console64.dll
  158720 ->     78336   49.35%    win64/pe     4threads64.dll
  327168 ->    154112   47.10%    win64/pe     4utils64.dll
  153600 ->     71168   46.33%    win64/pe     4wt.dll
  124928 ->     59392   47.54%    win64/pe     es.dll
  210944 ->     98816   46.84%    win64/pe     SysUtils64.dll

 

[Charles Dye]

I used to be a stickler for both size and speed but today, computers are so fast and disk space so plentiful that I don't pay much attention to either.

When I started writing plugins, I thought the savings in disk space and download times was worth it. Nowadays I'm not so sure. UPX at this point is basically a habit. My base plugin template calls UPX; new plugins created from that template inherit it.

 

[vefatica]

If you ZIP/7ZIP the file for transmission, I doubt UPX saves you much (if anything). Here's an interesting comparison, using 4UTILS64.DLL (327,168 bytes, 154,112 bytes upx'd).

2024-06-23  17:44         150,225  nonupx.zip
2024-06-23  17:45         150,245  upx.zip

v:\upxtest> d *.7z
2024-06-23  17:47         140,061  nonupx.7z
2024-06-23  17:48         150,200  upx.7z
[code]

 

[Joe Caverly]

V33 added the CENTER option to the ACTIVATE command.

Joe