Windows on 68000

[Octocontrabass]

Where are code pages being switched?

Whenever you need to switch between languages that can't be handled using a single code page.

English-speaking people have been programming on computers ever since they were created and didn't have a need for UTF-8 or anything else like that.

Quite a few of them did need it. Sure, the main benefit of Unicode is being able to handle text in every language at once, but there are plenty of things like mathematical symbols that simply didn't fit in a typical 8-bit character set.

Ok, so why is a string being uppercased then?

Case-insensitive text search? Formatting options in a word processor? File names in a DOS filesystem? Whatever the reason, it'll break things in unexpected ways.

Well - lock and unlock all the time depending on which katakana character you want?

I thought you were talking about switching between Latin and kana. Japanese keyboards have an extra key specifically for that, and it functions as a lock key, not a shift key. In kana mode, the normal shift keys are used to switch from common to uncommon kana. There's no need for a corresponding lock key because you can't type anything meaningful using only uncommon kana.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B ... D%E5%88%97

Okay, so it's called "Moon layout" (not "moon array") and you have to write the name in Japanese (月配列) for search engines to find any information about it. It sure is convenient that the forums use UTF-8.

Supporting only Moon layout for Japanese is like supporting only Dvorak for English. Practically every keyboard in Japan follows some variation of the JIS layout, such as the OADG 106-key/109-key layout for PCs.

[kerravon]

Where are code pages being switched?

Whenever you need to switch between languages that can't be handled using a single code page.

As a Vietnamese programmer, I have no reason to switch languages. One code page is fine.

English-speaking people have been programming on computers ever since they were created and didn't have a need for UTF-8 or anything else like that.

Quite a few of them did need it. Sure, the main benefit of Unicode is being able to handle text in every language at once, but there are plenty of things like mathematical symbols that simply didn't fit in a typical 8-bit character set.

If I didn't state it already - I'll state it again - my target market is software engineers like myself. Not mathematicians. They can have custom/slow software.

I'm after text for a reason too. Otherwise I wouldn't be interested in box-drawing characters.

Ok, so why is a string being uppercased then?

Case-insensitive text search? Formatting options in a word processor?

Those would require a deliberate action by the user. The Japanese user isn't going to do that.

File names in a DOS filesystem?

Is this the DOS filenames that can allegedly be in katakana?

Whatever the reason, it'll break things in unexpected ways.

The only reason you've alluded to is case-insensitive search. So in the same way that programmers need to stop asking for 'c' - or even 'c'/'C' - and instead need to use toupper() == 'C', they will need to allow case-sensitivity to be an option. Note that I already did make changes to one of the PDOS-related utilities to stop having both a -x and a -X as command line options, in preparation for katakana.

Well - lock and unlock all the time depending on which katakana character you want?

I thought you were talking about switching between Latin and kana. Japanese keyboards have an extra key specifically for that, and it functions as a lock key, not a shift key. In kana mode, the normal shift keys are used to switch from common to uncommon kana. There's no need for a corresponding lock key because you can't type anything meaningful using only uncommon kana.

As a Japanese programmer, I have zero interest in switching to Latin.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%8B ... D%E5%88%97

Okay, so it's called "Moon layout" (not "moon array") and you have to write the name in Japanese (月配列) for search engines to find any information about it. It sure is convenient that the forums use UTF-8.

Sure. In very limited contexts. In this case writing text that I can't even read.

Supporting only Moon layout for Japanese is like supporting only Dvorak for English. Practically every keyboard in Japan follows some variation of the JIS layout, such as the OADG 106-key/109-key layout for PCs.

If Dvorak was able to allow programmers to touch-type 3 times as fast, I would indeed be switching to Dvorak in the English-speaking world. But that's not how touch-typing works. It's arbitrary, and QWERTY is fine.

Australia switched to metric for a reason too. I'm looking for an opportunity to switch Australia to driving on the right-hand side of the road too. It's always on the back of my mind. Even on this day, 2025-07-30 according to the bottom-right of my computer screen.

[Octocontrabass]

As a Vietnamese programmer, I have no reason to switch languages. One code page is fine.

As a multilingual programmer, one code page is not fine.

If I didn't state it already - I'll state it again - my target market is software engineers like myself. Not mathematicians.

What about software engineers who are writing software for mathematicians?

Those would require a deliberate action by the user. The Japanese user isn't going to do that.

What happens when the full-text search is case-insensitive by default?

Is this the DOS filenames that can allegedly be in katakana?

I have used MS-DOS in Japanese. Katakana is allowed in file names.

As a Japanese programmer, I have zero interest in switching to Latin.

As a Japanese programmer, I primarily use Latin because most programming languages use English keywords written using Latin letters.

If Dvorak was able to allow programmers to touch-type 3 times as fast, I would indeed be switching to Dvorak in the English-speaking world.

Most programmers don't care about typing as fast as possible, they care about typing fast enough, and most programmers can already type fast enough with the keyboard they already know how to use.

Why did you expect the Amiga to replace the IBM PC? Because it was better? The PC was already good enough. It's the same with choosing a keyboard layout. It's the same with choosing which side of the road to drive on. People don't care about what's better when they already have something good enough.

[kerravon]

As a Vietnamese programmer, I have no reason to switch languages. One code page is fine.

As a multilingual programmer, one code page is not fine.

Then you're not my target market. Note that my target market is willing to accept single-tasking PDOS too.

If I didn't state it already - I'll state it again - my target market is software engineers like myself. Not mathematicians.

What about software engineers who are writing software for mathematicians?

Ok, you've teased out another unstated assumption.

I'm focused on software engineers that are going to maintain PDOS and its supporting infrastructure. There is no maths involved.

I theorize the existence of a monk on a hill in Vietnam etc who is isolated except for a computer with PDOS on it and a solar panel capable of keeping it charged. He debugs/develops the entire PDOS, and when he one day emerges from the jungle 2 decades later, his new OS takes the world by storm. I doubt that this person actually exists, but I believe Newton went away like that once and came back with Calculus and some other things.

Now - armed with PDOS - you can indeed create a you-beaut multitasking OS with edge-trigged preemptive and post-emptive quadruple-buffered graphics that supports 10th generation Unicode and uses 128 GiB of RAM. And supports mathematical symbols too.

But that's not this generation. This monk in question only speaks Vietnamese, so I have to give him the absolute minimum required to work his magic. PDOS is already the absolute minimum. There's no "fat" to strip out of it. Nothing that I can see, anyway.

Those would require a deliberate action by the user. The Japanese user isn't going to do that.

What happens when the full-text search is case-insensitive by default?

Provide an option to change the default. Change programming culture to be aware of language sensitivities. In a reasonable/minimal manner. It's the same as the "new Linux standard". I'm happy to change programming culture. Even if I am the only one who actually changes. There's another unstated assumption - I'm happy to change my culture - reasonably - but I don't know what to change it to. That "new Linux standard" is something only a few weeks old and not even implemented yet. I first used Linux about 3 decades ago. I'm very slow to getting programming standards I am happy with. Same applies to mainframe programming. Took 3-4 decades to pin down how to write AMODE-agnostic programs.

Is this the DOS filenames that can allegedly be in katakana?

I have used MS-DOS in Japanese. Katakana is allowed in file names.

So they shouldn't be uppercased then. So there hasn't been a valid reason given yet to uppercase a string.

As a Japanese programmer, I have zero interest in switching to Latin.

As a Japanese programmer, I primarily use Latin because most programming languages use English keywords written using Latin letters.

Oh - my (tentative) plan there was to use islower() on the keywords in the compiler to convert them into something the compiler can understand, so that people can program using (meaningless) katakana characters.

If Dvorak was able to allow programmers to touch-type 3 times as fast, I would indeed be switching to Dvorak in the English-speaking world.

Most programmers don't care about typing as fast as possible, they care about typing fast enough, and most programmers can already type fast enough with the keyboard they already know how to use.

Again - it's not "most programmers", it's "programmers like me". Although even that isn't quite accurate. If a Dvorak keyboard was 3 times faster, I would raise my daughter with Dvorak, and let Qwerty die with me.

Why did you expect the Amiga to replace the IBM PC? Because it was better?

Yes - technically better and cheaper. Why not buy it instead?

The PC was already good enough.

I don't expect people to throw their PC out the window. I expected a new computer purchase to be an Amiga.

It's the same with choosing a keyboard layout. It's the same with choosing which side of the road to drive on. People don't care about what's better when they already have something good enough.

I care what side of the road I drive on. I lived in the Philippines for 2.5 years, and I am about to move there again - likely permanently. I can't get a driver's license there without redoing the practical because I'm not from the right side of the road. This is somewhat devastating as I can't drive my daughter to the hospital in a semi-emergency. Or do other driving in an urgent situation that isn't a medical emergency.

All because Australians point-blank refused to throw 20 million vehicles in the trashcan and buy 20 million replacements and change all the street signs about 50 years ago. NEVER AGAIN!

[Octocontrabass]

So they shouldn't be uppercased then.

But file names are still case-insensitive. Lowercase Latin letters must still be replaced with uppercase Latin letters before writing the file name to the disk.

Oh - my (tentative) plan there was to use islower() on the keywords in the compiler to convert them into something the compiler can understand, so that people can program using (meaningless) katakana characters.

Meaningful English words are easier to use than meaningless katakana gibberish.

Although even that isn't quite accurate. If a Dvorak keyboard was 3 times faster, I would raise my daughter with Dvorak, and let Qwerty die with me.

So you'll allow "bad" keyboard layouts for yourself, but not for anyone else?

Yes - technically better and cheaper. Why not buy it instead?

It didn't stay better and cheaper. PCs caught up pretty quickly.

I don't expect people to throw their PC out the window. I expected a new computer purchase to be an Amiga.

If you had bought a PC right before the release of the Amiga, by the time you decided to replace it, a new PC might be "good enough" and it would run the software you bought for your old PC.

I lived in the Philippines for 2.5 years, and I am about to move there again - likely permanently. I can't get a driver's license there without redoing the practical because I'm not from the right side of the road. This is somewhat devastating as I can't drive my daughter to the hospital in a semi-emergency. Or do other driving in an urgent situation that isn't a medical emergency.

You could choose to not move to the Philippines.

[iansjack]

Australians should change their transport infrastructure so you don’t have to go to the bother of taking a simple test that you would (presumably) pass with ease?

That’s a fairly good summary of your attitude to the world of computing and the world in general.

And, no, Newton didn’t go away for a number of years and come back with calculus. He developed it over a number of years. And, unlike some, he was the first to admit that he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Calculus didn’t suddenly appear with Newton (or Leibniz - take your pick) but was the culmination of ideas that started with early civilizations.

Living in Newton’s country of birth, I’ll stick with driving on the left if that’s OK with you. And when in Rome, I’ll drive on the right.

[kerravon]

Australians should change their transport infrastructure so you don’t have to go to the bother of taking a simple test that you would (presumably) pass with ease?

I don't think I would pass it with ease. There is a reason that they force left side foreign drivers, but not right side foreign drivers, to take the practical. All my reaction is for the left.

That’s a fairly good summary of your attitude to the world of computing and the world in general.

And?

And, no, Newton didn’t go away for a number of years and come back with calculus. He developed it over a number of years.

I looked it up.

https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/ ... didnt-have

Isaac Newton, who self-isolated for two years during the Great Plague of the 1660s, was a commonly tweeted example of what could be achieved during isolation. It is probably fair to assume Newton was able to develop calculus and theories on optics because he wasn’t trying to look after kids and someone else was doing the cooking and cleaning.

And, unlike some, he was the first to admit that he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Calculus didn’t suddenly appear with Newton (or Leibniz - take your pick) but was the culmination of ideas that started with early civilizations.

So? He was still able to do great work in isolation.

Living in Newton’s country of birth, I’ll stick with driving on the left if that’s OK with you.

It's not ok, but I acknowledge that I'm outvoted. That's why I love computers so much - I can't be outvoted. It's between me and a machine.

[kerravon]

So they shouldn't be uppercased then.

But file names are still case-insensitive. Lowercase Latin letters must still be replaced with uppercase Latin letters before writing the file name to the disk.

If you can't write lowercase latin you presumably can't write katakana either. So this is another example where katakana folding into uppercase latin is required.

Oh - my (tentative) plan there was to use islower() on the keywords in the compiler to convert them into something the compiler can understand, so that people can program using (meaningless) katakana characters.

Meaningful English words are easier to use than meaningless katakana gibberish.

I disagree. "if" is a foreign language already. There's only a few keywords. The katakana should become muscle memory. What I don't want is to have to change keyboards.

Although even that isn't quite accurate. If a Dvorak keyboard was 3 times faster, I would raise my daughter with Dvorak, and let Qwerty die with me.

So you'll allow "bad" keyboard layouts for yourself, but not for anyone else?

Oh sure - another unstated assumption I guess. I did make contact with some Japanese already, but they didn't have any kids available to learn touch-typing katakana, so I didn't pursue that. But you can see here what I believe can be replicated with katakana:

https://www.pdos.org/vlog/vlog.htm

Search for 2024-11-08

Yes - technically better and cheaper. Why not buy it instead?

It didn't stay better and cheaper. PCs caught up pretty quickly.

That's hindsight. At the time it came out, I expected the Amiga to be purchased. No reason to pay more money for something else.

I don't expect people to throw their PC out the window. I expected a new computer purchase to be an Amiga.

If you had bought a PC right before the release of the Amiga, by the time you decided to replace it, a new PC might be "good enough" and it would run the software you bought for your old PC.

Another unstated assumption. I expect the software bought for the old PC to have an Amiga version. That's my exact point. A change in programming culture too. Any new contender should just be a simple recompile if the software is C90-compliant.

I lived in the Philippines for 2.5 years, and I am about to move there again - likely permanently. I can't get a driver's license there without redoing the practical because I'm not from the right side of the road. This is somewhat devastating as I can't drive my daughter to the hospital in a semi-emergency. Or do other driving in an urgent situation that isn't a medical emergency.

You could choose to not move to the Philippines.

I could choose to not move to the Amiga too. I expect to be able to move seamlessly. World standardization, basically. For people and computers. You can change the CPU though. And you can change the brand of car.

I guess that's the main unstated assumption - I'm preparing for a post-apocalypse (or not necessarily an apocalypse - just an agreement to get things sorted/to transition) world standardization.

You can't necessarily predict where opportunities arise. Prior to 9/11 I had watched news on Afghanistan and was rooting for the guys who supported rights for women, but things didn't seem to be going well. Someone emailed me after 9/11 with subject "major breaking news". Here is my exact and full reply:

> You noticed the massive terrorist attack in the US ?

No, thanks.

I hope the US invades Afghanistan now.

BFN. Paul.


I haven't just spent an enormous amount of effort on PDOS. I've also spent an enormous amount of effort on Afghanistan and Iraq and others (click on the photo to get a larger photo to see some more countries):

https://antisubjugator.blogspot.com/201 ... otest.html

and what needs to be done to fully respond to 9/11, basically this:

https://mutazilah.org/enlight.htm

But without cooperation, I can't progress that. PDOS doesn't require cooperation. So PDOS is what I do until another opportunity arises.

[iansjack]

The Amiga 1000 + monitor was actually more expensive when it was introduced than a basic PC.

[kerravon]

The Amiga 1000 + monitor was actually more expensive when it was introduced than a basic PC.

That's fine. At the time an Amiga became cheaper, I expect people to be able to seamlessly switch. Instead of being tied to a monopoly. It's a failure of software engineering. Not the only one. Here's another (written by someone else):

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-you-leave ... ff-Sturm-2

[iansjack]

Presumably you mean the Amiga 500, relesed in 1987. £499 without a monitor here in the UK. Price of an Amstrad 512 PC compatible was £399, complete with monitor.

I’m afraid your rose-tinted spectacles are hiding the true facts from you. The Amiga didn’t succeed as a business machine because it was too expensive and lacked the software that people needed.

[kerravon]

Presumably you mean the Amiga 500, relesed in 1987. £499 without a monitor here in the UK. Price of an Amstrad 512 PC compatible was £399, complete with monitor.

It's not just the initial release price that matters. It's what happens after that. The price came down.

I’m afraid your rose-tinted spectacles are hiding the true facts from you.

rose-tinted? You think I had shares in Commodore?

The Amiga didn’t succeed as a business machine because it was too expensive

No it wasn't. I bought an Amiga 500 myself. Not as soon as it hit the shelves, but when the price came down.

and lacked the software that people needed.

THIS IS THE PROBLEM I AM TRYING TO SOLVE!!!

And I have been trying to solve it for 30 years with PDOS.

Firstly to find out what the limits of C90 were that were preventing people from writing e.g. Telix 3.15 in C90 so that it could have been recompiled for the Amiga. There weren't any! I only recently - like a few months ago - got serial comms working on the mainframe, so Telix could have been recompiled for the mainframe too! That simple - run your BBS on the mainframe! I wasn't able to do that in the actual time period and I have been wondering why for around (2024 - 1988 =) 36 years.

[iansjack]

It's not just the initial release price that matters. It's what happens after that. The price came down.

Yes - the Amiga 500's price went down to £399. The same price as the Amstrad, but you also had to buy a monitor for the Amiga - still more expensive. And still lacking software compared to the PC.

No it wasn't. I bought an Amiga 500 myself. Not as soon as it hit the shelves, but when the price came down.

We've already covered that mistruth. The Amiga was always more expensive than the cheapest PC compatible. I also bought - still have - an Amiga 500, and an Amiga 1200 (I had three Amigas in all - I'm a sucker for toys) plus several PCs (including an Amstrad 1512) for serious work. This is not America - you can't just make up the numbers.

THIS IS THE PROBLEM I AM TRYING TO SOLVE!!!

And I have been trying to solve it for 30 years with PDOS.

I thought we were talking about why the Amiga didn't sell as well as the PC. A bit late now to solve the problem when PCs are so cheap and any Amigas you can buy are so expensive. We have to work with the world the way it is, not how we wish it had turned out.

The big problem with the Amiga is that you were tying yourself in to proprietary hardware. The open nature of the PC architecture was the biggest factor in its success. That's what allowed Amstrad to produce a bargain-basement machine. The joy of the Amiga was its novel operating system; why would I want to replace that with some MS-DOS or Windows imitation?

[eekee]

I had a post-collapse thought: Where would you find datasheets for ARM SoCs? It would be easier to get Android devices and -- I swear I was not expecting this conclusion -- run PDOS in userspace which is already possible. Ditto with laptops and maybe tower PCs, depending on available power. But on Android you can run Termux or better, Linux chroots. On PCs, you can install Linux or run WSL.

As for the GPL and other copyrights, even present US law is mostly based on the principle that copyright enforcement depends on the copyright holder; breaches are a civil matter, not a crime. But a reputation for respecting agreements and contracts would ease your dealings with neighboring families and tribes. Respecting the GPL in such circumstances might suggest that you're very trustworthy indeed. Whether that's enough to outcompete the local Linux dorks with their Python or even Bash-based post-collapse agricultural databases, I'm not sure.

I'm finding post-collapse nicer to think about than 80s 16-bit computers. All of them were over-complex or under-developed or somehow managed to be both (the PC). Did you know that before the PC was launched, an engineer at Apple figured out how to use the 68000 with an 8-bit bus to cut costs? (Not a 68008, a 68000.) In the early 80s there were all these companies innovating to provide more power for the price, but IBM just... bleh! And people worshipped IBM for it (which is my real beef with the situation). But besides all that, post-collapse especially, the chemicals those old computers were made with mean that some sensible people will want them far away from themselves and their children.

My thoughts on character encoding are, "Pick a market, pick an encoding for that market, and stick to it." Big chunga OSs whose market is the whole world and its dog are probably best with UTF-8. My own preference is UTF-8 with simple straightforward code to translate to and from a 32-bit internal representation, as Thompson and Ritchie intended, but some of my hardware is so small that ASCII is preferable. I'm not sure what I'll do if 32-bit turns out to be impractical in the 4MB NDS, maybe a 16-bit internal encoding as I think T&R did in the 90s. (It won't entirely be an internal encoding in my OS, but that's not a huge issue.)

I wonder how long complex CJK scripts would last, post-collapse? They are as they are due to an excessively powerful scribe class. Korean in particular was badly fouled up by such a scribe class after a king introduced a beautifull simple and practical alphabet.

@kerravon: Is Vietnamese script suitable for combining characters? (Some scripts are, such as Hebrew.) If so, it might solve your issue of fitting Vietnamese + ASCII into 8 bits.

ASCII itself was designed for combining characters, but it never caught on because it didn't match peoples' expectations. People like capitals with accents to be lower-height. With or without that, the combiners would have to be put at different heights for upper and lower case. Huh... now I think about it, all those features could be implemented at the display end with ASCII as an internal representation. Perhaps use ^H to signify combining, a role it currently has in troff output and dumb terminal input anyway.

[Octocontrabass]

If you can't write lowercase latin you presumably can't write katakana either. So this is another example where katakana folding into uppercase latin is required.

Where are you getting these ridiculous assumptions? All Japanese versions of MS-DOS allow Latin and katakana in file names. File names are case-insensitive, which means lowercase Latin letters are automatically replaced with uppercase Latin letters, exactly the same as every other version of MS-DOS. There is no concept of uppercase or lowercase for katakana, so the conversion to uppercase has no effect on them.

I disagree. "if" is a foreign language already.

English is the most common foreign language. Your hypothetical Japanese programmer will be perfectly happy to use the English words they already know instead of learning new katakana gibberish.

What I don't want is to have to change keyboards.

Why would you have to change keyboards? For that matter, which keyboards would you be changing?

I expect the software bought for the old PC to have an Amiga version.

It often did, but the Amiga version was sold separately, so you had to buy a new copy of the software to switch from PC to Amiga.

World standardization, basically.

Like Unicode?