Textwin - "a better KA9Q than KA9Q" !

"A better KA9Q than KA9Q!"

So John Washington says ! This page was originally sourced from him. TextWin-related mail to textwin at wash.demon.co.uk, or see John's contact details on JohnWash 951125

This is a new release of TextWin, the "drop-in-and-forget" windowing extension of Ka9q (Ka9q is sometimes known as net.exe or NOS). TextWin uses the same source code as Ka9q, it is simply a much nicer screen interface, and is exceptionally easy to install if you are already running Ka9q. It is an MS-DOS program, not an MS-Windows program.

For the latest developments on Textwin see the Textwin development Web page.

This is version 2.16d (tw 951020).

For Demon users, as with Ka9q 2.16d, changing to this version is ESSENTIAL. If you are using Demon, previous versions will fail when using the new Ascend lines.

ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/ibmpc/dos/apps/textwin now contains:

• -readme.1st: This file, a description of other files in greater detail.
• tw216d_d.zip: User manual, including installation directions. Historical information. Example configuration file (textwin.cfg).
• tw216d_1.zip: Tiny TextWin executable, a version of TextWin with some esoteric Ka9q features removed, to save memory. First-time users should try this version before the 'small' or 'big' versions.

• tw216d_2.zip: Small TextWin executable, a version of TextWin exactly corresponding to small ka9q net.exe.
• tw216d_3.zip: Big TextWin executable, a version of TextWin with everything but the kitchen sink. It corresponds to the big ka9q net.exe.

ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/ibmpc/dos/apps/textwin/source contains:

• tw216d_s.zip: Source files different from or additional to ka9q 2.16d source and brief notes for developers.

Packing list

tw216d_d.zip contains documentation for TextWin 2.16d. You should find within it the following files:

Executable versions

Memory is becoming a problem for Ka9q. TextWin is essentially a "bigger Ka9q", so memory is a severe problem for TextWin. There are three optional executable binaries for TextWin. Therefore, rather than including the documentation with each binary, the documentation is provided separately, to reduce your download time.

First time users are recommended to try TinyTw. It's what I used myself. The larger versions are on ftp.demon.co.uk in a different subdirectory to discourage users from downloading files they may not need. You DO NOT REQUIRE the other versions, unless there are facilities missing from TinyTw that you need. Details of the differences are outlined early in twhist.txt.

Source code for developers

Source code is in tw216d_s.zip (133k). Only those files that are modified from Ka9q 2.16d are provided, so you will also need Ka9q source if you wish to compile it. Borland C++ 3.1 is strongly recommended, I've not heard of anyone successfully compiling Ka9q with anything else.

Configuring Textwin

The hints concerning configuring up-scripts apply equally to Textwin and to the Demon KA9Q.