Discussion for application to include and compressed

[tyama501]

Discussion relating to

CONFIG_APPS_xxx
#1853

and

CONFIG_APPS_COMPRESS
#1867

[ghaerr]

If you like, I can implement two new tags to be used in elkscmd/Applications (:1232k and :1232c) which would allow you to experiment with adding files two the PC-98 distribution using CONFIG_APPS_BY_IMAGSZ and CONFIG_APPS_COMPRESS rather than CONFIG_APPS_xxx.

In general, it would be good if the :1200k tag in elkscmd/Applications would be used to build the base disk image, and then :1232k was added for PC-98 uncompressed and :1232c for compressed image.

Ultimately, we just need to know the additional files that need to be added to the 1232k distribution when CONFIG_APPS_BY_IMAGESZ is used, rather than the current CONFIG_APPS_xxx settings. That will allow the images to be identical, which is the goal - that the newer select-by-size option can be used with identical results.

If there is too much difference between the IBM PC :1200k image and the desired PC-98 1232k image (or, if the PC-98 1440k image is desired to be different from the IBM PC 1440k image), then I would propose a completely custom solution for selecting applications for PC-98 by using a new elkscnd/Applications.pc98 file when CONFIG_ARCH_PC98 is set.

What do you think?

[ghaerr]

Hello @tyama501,

I would like to remove these and some network application that does not work for PC-98 and add nx application instead for now.

I think I have found a way we can modify elkscmd/Applications to remove just :net applications and allow you to add nx applications and others for PC-98, without having to go through and add :1232k to almost every :1200k entry. I will post that so that you don't have to go through the process.

Thank you!

[tyama501]

I would also like to add new beep which is not included in 1200K :)
Thank you.

[tyama501]

Current fd1232 compressed image is 185KB free.

Maybe I would like to free 100KB more to add Japanese applications and fonts later.
One of the candidates of remove is nxclock that cannot show local time.
I will think about it a little more.

Thank you.

[ghaerr]

One idea to add more space to the compressed image would be to remove the automatic addition of all the :1440k files and instead only add those you want, using :1232c. This would be done by removing :1440k| in the following line in elkscmd/Make.install:

    TAGS += :360c|:1232c|:1440k|

Feel free to remove nxclock from the 1232k image. We might also move things like tee, cal and head from :720k to :1440k to help free some space.

[ghaerr]

Another idea would be to use elks-compress on the .FNT file and then decompress it in-place in far memory. This is a bit more complicated, but essentially would work by reading in the compressed .FNT file as you normally do into an area that is just 16 bytes larger than needed. The decompress function in elks/fs/exodecr.c would then be called to decompress the data before being used. It is decompressed in the same buffer that it resides in, pretty cool. More examples on how that is done is in the elkscmd/sys_utils/decomp.c source if you are interested.

[tyama501]

I tested with PC-9801RX21 with intel 286, 12MHz.

Here are video.
sl witout compress
https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/assets/61556504/2ac7b133-e8e7-4a21-a7c0-e9ae0f31cb4a

sl with compress
https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/assets/61556504/bb667489-1947-4ad9-8205-c0d9a2491af7

Only 2.3 second difference.
Not bad at all.

Thank you!