Home > JNos Graphical Shell for MS-DOS

JNos Graphical Shell for MS-DOS

Graphical User Interface/Shell for DOS
By 26/10/10 [Last Edited by Joseph 15/04/11]
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JNos is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for DOS. I thought I would try and write a GUI for DOS, as other GUIs didn't offer the features I wanted, also, it would probably be the closest I would get to writing an actual operating system for the mean time. These are the features it currently has:
  • Mouse Support
  • Run programs without using QB's shell command
  • Integrated Command Interpreter (CMDCONS), controls most aspects of the shell
  • Ability to bypass the GUI and use CMDCONS in text mode (if you don't have a mouse/VGA card)
  • Support for JNos compliant applications (spec coming soon)
  • StatusWin - see live status updates (GUI only)
Here are some pictures of it running on my Toshiba Libretto 110CT:



Above: Splash screen



Above: The desktop



Above: The Command Line (CMDCONS)



CMDCONS shelling out to a JNos Compliant Application (sorry about the yellowness of the picture)

JNos is written in QuickBasic and runs under DOS (MS-DOS, PC-DOS, etc), it runs quite fast despite the fact that QuickBasic is a slow language, although the the BMP loader is very slow (going to be sorted). JNos V1.0-2007 is heavily under construction and development is painfully slow (it was meant to be released last year, so V1.0-2007 will be changed to V1.0-2008).

Thanks to Lee Vidal at www.leev.co.nr for creating the Splash Screen

Limitations

  • Single Tasking - until I find out how to make a multitasking script interpreter without writing tonnes and tonnes of code, it will stay like this.
  • Slow BMP viewer - needs fixing up
  • Messy sources - I need to clean up the source code to make it faster and more efficient.
  • VGA can only display up to 16 colours - Will sort this out when I incorporate SVGA routines.

Next Version

Hopefully in the next version (if ever), I will hope to include this features:
  • TCP/IP networking
  • Built in sound
  • SVGA
UPDATE: V1.0-2007 Scrapped. Version2 being planned/designed now. I'm really do not have any spare time at the moment, especially with GCSEs approaching, so I probably won't be starting this until late July. However, here is the Version2 splash screen:



Design/Development sheets for Version2 can be downloaded here in .PUB (Microsoft Publisher 2003 format):

Batch File System
Compliant Apps
Boot Options
VGA Splash

Download

You can download a development binary below. Please note, it has many bugs, and not many features.

JNOS_1_DEV.ZIP Download: Click Here Please Note: This page is still under construction, more content to come.