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A question at the end about using X without window manager for programs 
started from rxvt.

Wordperfect does not work correctly under dosemu.  For one thing, I would 
need to remap Alt-F1 etc. not to switch terminals, and other things don't 
work.  Under xdosemu things still do not work.

VDE free wordprocessor for DOS works somewhat better under dosemu but some 
commands are broken.

Today someone asked us for a laptop that she could use for wordprocessing 
and spreadsheets.  We combined the good parts from two matching 386s.  She 
does not want linux, and besides it has 3MB and would not run Abiword 
well.  Or dosemu.

We dug out DOS WORD (free).  It produces a format (Word 5.0?) that will 
not import into Word 97 or two free Windows 98 wordprocessors.

Then we tried DOS WORKS 3.0.  It produces Word 5.0 or RTF (full of garbage 
but it does import) or Wordperfect 5.0 or 5.1.  Later WORD will import WP 
5.1.  It was not displaying underline bold or italic or superscript in LCD 
or BW mode until we changed a setting from text to graphics.  It did 
display different colors in colored text mode for underline etc., like 
WP51 on color VGA. I cannot remember that green means underline, purple 
subscripts, etc. I exported to WP5.1 and it refused to import the file 
back (complained of a locked .tmp file that did not exist), but 
Wordperfect itself imported the file and it looked wordperfect.

Under DOSEMU, I could also produce plain text without actually viewing the 
bold or underlines in regular mode, or dosemu -V to use VGA mode and 
presumably colored underlines which I detest.  Or plain text with xdosemu 
under x, again no underlines showed.

I then tried this on my desktop which has TTL and VGA monitors both 
plugged into it.  WORKS got VERY confused when I switched to graphics mode 
and may have been displaying upper ASCII.  DOSEMU had the same problem on 
this computer.  I recopied works.ini to fix the problem since I could not 
see to change settings.  (Keep backups of everything in another 
directory).

WORKS under x11/xdosemu in graphics mode works perfectly and produces 
Wordperfect 5.1 (and probably RTF which is mostly garbage defaults) that 
Wordperfect can read and WORD 97 and later can import.  It is simpler to 
use than Abiword apart from needing to set up and use dosemu.  It is the 
only way I know of to produce and import Wordperfect 5.1 under linux.  It 
uses far more memory - dosemu.bin itself uses 2.7% of 512MB or close to 
14MB memory.  Plus icewm and Xvesa.

WORKS under dosemu does import existing WP51 files (once you copy them to 
/root/dosemu/works.  I can use it to convert WP51 to very garbagey RTF.

WORKS with plain dosemu in VGA mode would probably work on a VGA-only 
setup.  One reason for using a dual-monitor system is so I can see 
underlines in wordperfect rather than colors.    Set to mono, VGA WP 
displays a choice of underlines OR bold, not both. (With Hercules Plus MGA 
card it displays even italics but this card conflicts with VGA)

Wordperfect itself is still more efficient (fewer keystrokes needed - F8 
for underline instead of Alt-T U) but this will be handy for typing short 
documents or reading/editing longer ones while online researching 
something.  I have not tested most features but I don't use them anyway.

Our DOS CAD program works fine in VGA-dosemu.



I tried to start xdosemu without a window manager:
(Xvesa -screen 800x600x16 &); DISPLAY=:0  xdosemu

It did not work.  Nor did trying to start rxvt this way - it wanted a vga 
font and would not run.

Is there some way to use xdosemu without a window manager?




Sindi Keesan