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Pun Boleh

@everythingalsocan@techhub.social

Learnt BASIC on a C64.
Spent several years writing DOS programs in Turbo Pascal. (Oh how I miss having to optimise my code.)
Fell in love with OS/2 the first time I read about it. Tried it and never looked back.
Been using Linux for some 3 decades now, still coding daily (different languages, mind you), but there's never been a desktop like OS/2's Workplace Shell. There's just no going back to application centric GUIs.

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Joined May 13, 2025

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Pun Boleh @everythingalsocan@techhub.social · Jul 21, 2026

Replying to @felipe@social.treehouse.systems

@felipe@social.treehouse.systems Bought a Mini PC hoping to set it up as a (portable) dedicated ArcaOS machine, still waiting for delivery. I'm kind of getting the hang of Presentation Manager programming, and are just taking the first few steps into SOM Workplace Shell integration. I've got a few more toy projects planned for this year to build the building blocks for stuff I want to do later, and then hopefully next year I can move more actual workflows to the OS/2 desktop. 🤞 I am SO tired of application centric desktops getting in my way all the time.

Pun Boleh @everythingalsocan@techhub.social · Apr 05, 2026

Slowly fixing a number of minor issues in the learning app. On the visible side, most of the issues with the layout manager are fixed now. There are still some off by one errors, but at least everything is aligned now.

It was kind of fun solving this by staring at the code wondering what could possibly go wrong to produce observed result. Like, the layout believing it was a top level layout would cause the weird spacing, but for that its parent would have to be a window, and if it's not, the value is initialised as...... no, it's not initialised, there's no default value. 🤦

Anyway, I also started writing down some documentation for the file format. This being an OS/2 project hosted on codeberg, the documentation is written in the IPF format, from where it will be compiled to INF and markdown.
Once that is set up, I can do the same for the widget API.

Just a few more bug fixes.....

Pun Boleh @everythingalsocan@techhub.social · Mar 12, 2026

Replying to @3rz@freiburg.social

@3rz@freiburg.social Looking at the screenshots on archive.org, it looks like at least versions 5.x had a dedicated 'Format' button. (Somehow the 6.x screenshots look more familiar, but I used it on a 286, so I definitely didn't use any version that required a 386. 🤷) I don't remember much about how I used VGA Copy, only that we did use it for formatting. What I remember most vividly is that when I learnt Turbo Pascal I was stuck in text mode because I didn't know how to switch to graphics mode. VGA Copy was taunting me all the time, given that it was written in Turbo Pascal. Once I learnt how to switch to graphics mode I used those 3d box effects and text shadows used by VGA Copy, living the dream. :)

Pun Boleh @everythingalsocan@techhub.social · Mar 12, 2026

Replying to @3rz@freiburg.social

@3rz@freiburg.social Oh dear, I hope my memory is not playing tricks on me. What I remember is that VGA-Copy used sector interleaving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleaving_(disk_storage) which was said to speed up disk access. I can't find any documentation that claims VGA-Copy had this feature, though. Other than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_formatting which states that programs such as VGA-Copy used techniques such as interleaving sectors. On the other hand, Wikipedia states that VGA-Copy offered to format 1.44M disks with a capacity of 1.7M, which I don't remember. All I remember is that everyone (well, the few school friends who had a computer at the time) used VGA-Copy because of its cool interface and because it made disks faster.

Pun Boleh @everythingalsocan@techhub.social · Mar 11, 2026

Replying to @3rz@freiburg.social

@3rz@freiburg.social VGA Copy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA-Copy (I can't quite put in words how influential and inspiring it was at the time.)

Pun Boleh @everythingalsocan@techhub.social · Dec 24, 2025

Replying to @cstross__dup_483@wandering.shop

@cstross@wandering.shop One day someone will rediscover CUA91. 🤞

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