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BESTPROG.TXT (All rights reserved) Wed 15-May-1996
Timo's subjective choice of best PD & SW MS-DOS material
--------------------------------------------------------
Note that this list is subjective reflecting my own usages. Hence
one cannot "submit" to this list, as some users and authors have
done after this list has become fairly widespread. Comments and
views are naturally welcome, nevertheless. You are free to quote
brief passages from my text provided you clearly indicate the source
with an acknowledgment. Please do not distribute any part of this
package separately.
The addresses of some of the authors can be found in the since
discontinued
41223 Dec 17 1995 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/pd2/author35.zip
author35.zip Email addresses of 255 MS-DOS shareware and PD authors
Not surprisingly many of the selections that were on the original
list were utilities that complemented what the earlier MS-DOS
versions lacked. I have moved the consequently outdated selections
to a separate file earlybst.txt in this same collection.
asa55c-?.zip The As-Easy-As spreadsheet. At time of writing of
this item we only have one shareware spreadsheet to
offer from Garbo, but it is all that is needed. This
123 and VP planner compatible spreadsheet gives all
the basic functions needed in a good spreadsheet
including useful graphics plotting. Highly
recommended.
cshow904.zip Much of the information and even recreation comes in
the form of GIF pictures. For example, Garbo
archives now have an extensive collection of select
astronomy images. These required a good viewer, like
Bob Berry's the CompuShow GIF viewer both with with
a traditional and dialog interface. I prefer the
former and have listed that version. Bob has been
improving his program constantly. The recent
versions can utilize the full properties of the
video card, thus giving very sharp images when the
video adapter is capable of it.
dc106f.zip Directory control from the PC-Magazine by Michael
Mefford. A simple, but a very useful point and shoot
facility to copy, move, rename, or delete files. DC
is an excellent example of the fact that a good
program doesn't need to be over-packed with features
nor need it be flashy. There is also an advanced
rendition df460.zip by Gordon Haff called Directory
Freedom. The interface is the same but there are
much more options, and the program is very
configurable. Also highly recommended. But I have a
nagging suspicion, with no hard evidence whatsoever,
that DF sometimes causes confusion on the disk.
dcf52.zip A fast 1-pass copying facility for floppies. One of
the most irksome MS-DOS task is copying a floppy in
a single drive. (Also finally seen to in the latest
MS-DOS versions, I hear.) I have been looking for a
suitable 1-pass program to recommend for quite
awhile, and found quite a few, and this one is it.
It has a nice interface and is fast since it can
skip the empty sections. A simple but useful
alternative to look at is xdcpy200.zip. Another
option worth looking at is the more professional
copyq322.zip.
dirmat31.zip Dirmatch for comparing & manipulating two dirs side
by side. Another really great utility from Michael
Mefford. Originally appeared in the PC-Magazine.
dirx110.zip A shell for listing and handling lzexe and pklite
etc. compressed executables. A very useful companion
to lzexe and pklite. Nothing is perfect, though. The
documentation leaves much to be desired in a top
utility. But the basic idea is very sound. Most
importantly to my knowledge there are no
alternatives (which is rather odd) so dirx is left
to hold the field at the moment despite its faults
and the non-support. Strangely, the author has shown
no interest whatsoever in the feedback I have tried
to give on the configuration problems with the
program. Fortunately such a supercilious attitude is
not common among the authors.
dosclip.com "A TSR utility that provides Windows-like
cut-and-paste facilities to applications running
under DOS". A PC-Magazine utility by Douglas Boling
in vol11n07.zip. I use it for example for cutting
and pasting commands and data when being connected,
using MS-DOS Kermit or Telnet, to your Unix hosts
Garbo and Chyde. The only problem is that the hot
keys are too common and may thus interfere with
other applications. For a patch see
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/pd2/tspost09.zip.
fed153.zip FileEDit binary editor for MS-DOS by Phillip Nickel.
Binary (or rather hexadecimal) editors are
specialized utilities needed only occasionally for
advanced usage. As with ASCII editors the choice of
one's binary editor is a matter of taste and there
are other goods ones like the MicroEMACS-like
beav140.zip. See Garbo's /pc/binedit/ directory for
the the other, more often updated alternatives like
hex51.zip.
fp-219.zip The honors of virus scanning will now go to Virus
Protection system by Fridrik Skulason. It is free
for private users while it is fully commercial to
institutional usage. All the tests I have seen have
ranked it very highly both for its user interface
and its virus detecting and protection capacity.
Naturally there are other scanners, too, like
McAfee's established Scan and the very fast TBAV
from the Netherlands. All available from Garbo's
/pc/virus directory.
ftp-list.zip Anonymous FTP FAQ and Site Listing by Perry Rovers.
Frequently updated. This list has changed maintainer
several times during the last few years, and they
all have done a good job. But Perry has taken this
lists to new heights. Quite an impressive feat of
record keeping. There is also a specialized list for
MS-DOS FTP sites which I maintain. It is /pc/pd2/
moder58.zip. Both lists are heavily downloaded from
Garbo.
geoclk70.zip GeoClock by Joseph R Ahlgren is an interesting,
specialized program. It is a world map with a moving
day/night grayline. It can be used for displaying
locations of, for example FTP sites, on the world
map.
gifcm133.zip GIF Commentor to embed/remove text comments by J.
Lee. This is practically a maintainer's utility. It
allows deleting and inserting text comments into GIF
image files. It has been of much use to me in
preparing the astronomy and campus GIFs for Garbo.
gsz0607.zip Full-screen version of Zmodem file transfer
protocol. Chuck Forsberg's Zmodem has become the
veritable standard of file transfers from BBSes and
between PCs and hosts. GSZ brings the visual
interface to DSZ that has been formerly lacking
while it has been offered by some telecommunication
programs such as Telix. In the long run Forsberg's
programs must have been one of the the most
frequently updated programs on the scene, which is
not always an unqualified boon. The pace of updates,
has fortunately slacked in 1994-1995. Likewise, I
would prefer growing version numbers. But the
program is an establishment. The Zmodem Unix version
is available from the /unix/zmodem directory.
inter50*.zip Ralf Brown's MS-DOS Interrupt List. A staggering
amount of internal lore absolutely essential for
each and every serious PC programmer. Another
definitive reference is helppc21.zip, which has some
even more advanced material.
keytap13.zip A Non-TSR User Keystroke Simulator be Neil Faulks.
This is what is called a "keyfake" utility. What it
does is that it allows you to predefine in a batch
what keys will be automatically pressed first when
an application is called. Keyfake programs are very
handy for customizing in which state you wish to
enter some programs, or even skip the initial
screens like I do for the VP+ spreadsheet program.
The difference in keytap is that unlike other
keyfake programs it is not a TSR, but works by like
shell.
list91m.zip Vernon Buerg's list program, a definite must for
file browsing. It is so good that many other
programs rely on list instead of having browsing
routines of their own. Currently contains three
versions of list of varying program sizes. Very
handy also as a "grep" finder using the /F option.
Like with so many programs I have retained also an
older because of the gone features reported by the
users. In the case of list the older version
retained is /pc/goldies/list77a.zip. Unfortunately,
the author has been adamantly unresponsive to
keeping his utility versions updated at FTP program
archives.
mrcry209.zip If you wish to see and excellent mathematics program
take a look at Mercury "Equation solver based on
Borland's Eureka". It you are familiar with
Mathematica you'll see that it can perform many
similar mathematical derivation tasks. Specialized,
of course.
nbird34.zip Not everything has to be totally serious. Relax for
once and take a look at "3D animation of bird in
flight" by N. Centanni, if you have at least a 386
with a VGA. This is strictly pastime, but it gives a
very nice pretense of moving. Another excellent
"show" to watch is dazzl51c.zip.
pcopy787.zip Norm Patriquin's really fabulous copy program with a
huge selection of useful optional switches. The
current version is pcopy93.zip, but the program and
its installation have become so bloated that I have
personally preferred to stay with an older version.
In fact I still use version pcopy 5.0 from
/pc/miscutil/patriqui.zip on my old Zenith XT
portable. The phenomenon is what the columnist John
Dvorak calls excessive featurism. It is not just a
question of disk space, and more features than one
can usefully master, but also a serious question of
increasing loading times despite faster and faster
PCs.
pcps810.zip In an office with laser PostScript printers one
needs a good PostScript program with the ability to
handle even the upper ASCII characters correctly.
Such a utility is provided by Paul Carapetis is his
"Print files on PostScript". Besides it has an
impressive amount of options. Granted, using any
utility like this always will be complicated and
requires much experimenting first to get the kind of
output one wishes. Comes also as a Unix version.
pklts201.zip PKWare's compress and uncompress executables. One of
the great ideas of 1990 came from France from
Fabrice Bellard. He wrote lzexe91.zip (currently) to
decompress executable at call time by putting the
decompression code into the executable. PKWare took
the idea (an echo of the ancient .arc debacle?), and
developed with their background a more professional
product. I must say, however, that I don't like
pklite's (commercial version's) ability to make
irreversible compressed executables, because this
increases the danger of viruses going undetected. Of
course, there are reversal programs in circulation
to expand even the "irreversible" executables, but
this situation is not stylish.
pkz204g.exe The most useful all-round archiver. From PKWare.
(Earlier surrounded by some totally stone-age hassle
around the encryption issue when exported outside
North America). PKZIP was born out of the
controversy and litigation on .arc archiving. There
is also a Unix (actually multi-platform) version of
zip by Mark Adler, Rich Wales, Jean-loup Gailly, and
others of the Info-ZIP programming group. Zip is our
now compulsory choice in garbo.uwasa.fi archive
maintenance with for example ZOO outdone with its
date stamp problems and ARJ with its lack of a
proper Unix version. Despite its dominance, PKZIP is
not without its downsides. Beside the encryption
issue, the 2.0 release was advertized in PC
magazines almost a year prematurely. It became known
as a classic case of vaporware, and at first release
pkz204c.zip was outrageously buggy and sloppily
documented (the latter aspect still leaves a bit to
be desired). But 2.04G is the dominating archiver
with perhaps ARJ having the second most following
with its excellent multi-disk capabilities. No
wonder that the debates about "the best archiver"
have been very common for example on the Usenet
news.
tsejr4.zip The SemWare Editor Jr, former QEdit. More than
perhaps any other category of programs, the choice
of a text editor is a matter of taste. In shareware
I have opted for The SemWare Editor, Jr. because it
has the same basic WordStar-like commands than
Borland's Turbo Pascal interface, is nicely
configurable, and has a fair macro language for
advanced users. The only major thing I personally
miss very much is a right-side justification. That
is a problem was corrected in the fully commercial
SemWare Editor (TSE). You can get /pc/demo/
tsetd2.zip from Garbo to see a demo version of TSE.
TSE has a very much improved macro language. If I
had to choose one single program to be the number
one on my list, this would be it.
rmail41.zip PC ReadMail news & email & messages & FAQs etc by
Jeroen Schipper is an excellent, configurable
facility to read news and other kind of digested
material off line.
scram10.zip Why not include also one excellent educational game
on this list. My choice then is Scramble (Scrabble)
crossword board game by Diana Gruber. This
well-known word game is played even competitively.
On a computer is it a very good practice of the
English language for a non-English user. The game is
a nicely programmed realization of the theme.
scrlit18.zip A resident screen scrollback utility by Charles
Aitkens. This handy TSR utility allows one to scroll
back what has been written on the screen. Because
the scroll-back buffer reserves a lot of memory even
if it sensibly utilizes compression, scrollit is
best used with an upper memory manager like LOADHIGH
introduced in MS-DOS 5.0's or LASTBYTE (see a later
item). I have this tsr routinely loaded in my
autoexec.bat. This is one case where I have changed
my mind when a better utility came around.
Originally I had buffit30.zip as my choice, but
scrollit can capture colors and some output that
buffit can't. So, after the scrollit author made
some crucial improvements based on my feedback
suggestions in releasing version 1.7, I had a change
of heart.
shez109.zip A shell ("Compress Companion") to drive the many
archivers for MS-DOS (that is for the programs
un/compressing and clustering files). By Jim Derr,
who has constantly been keeping Shez up to date with
archiver developments. Makes life easy with so many
alternative archiver methods in use. The number of
the menu driven / hotkey options in this program is
something to behold. Like most of the other programs
on this list, I need it every day. Among its many
advanced usages is the possibility of using it to
convert archives from one format to another, and
much much more.
showf251.zip A disk mapping utility by my net friend and Turbo
Pascal guru Duncan Murdoch. It is without bells and
whistles, but can under special circumstances be a
real life-saver. It shows what you have written on
your hard disk. Combined with any good screen
capture program, you can retrieve at least parts of
lost text with it. It once saved me a lot of grief
after a program munched one of my text files. Show
Fat helped me to retrieve from disk what was
essential when the actual file could not be restored
by any other correction or unerase program. Duncan's
Show Fat is also instructive in showing how data is
arranged on your hard disk.
shrom24b.zip ShellRoom. Swap to disk when shelling from an
application. One of the big problems with many
programs that allow the user to shell to Dos, is
that the user is left with little memory. This very
useful utility remedies that by swapping the
application to disk when the application shells.
Borland's Turbo Pascal 5.0 is the only important
application I have found so far that is not amenable
to SHell ROOM. (TP 7.0 no more causes this problem.)
snippr26.zip Snip the screen into a file originally by Tom
Kihlken in the PC-Magazine. The later versions are
tweaks, that is the original source has been
developed ("tweaked") by several different savants.
This TSR utility can capture text from the screen,
and send it to the printer, a file, or the keyboard
buffer as if typed. See garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2/
tspost09.zip for a patch to customize the Snipper
hotkey. Personally I have stayed with /pc/goldies/
snippr24.zip since I do not need the new features.
swag.zip SWAG Reader + Information Files, SourceWare Archival
Group. Together with its data files a huge amount of
Turbo Pascal programming lore for the initiated. Not
being bashful I also note here my own tsfaqp.zip
collection of Frequently Asked Turbo Pascal
Questions. It is by far my most popular file among
downloaders. Besides I often use it for reference
myself, along SWAG.
target15.zip Formerly sst_53b.zip "Seek and thou shalt find
Supersonic Search Tool" originally called Whereis.
An excellent filename finder by Keith Ledbetter now
distributed by McAfee Associates. Fast, with a
plethora of useful options including browsing inside
archives, executing commands on found files, or even
going to the directory of the found file. (Echoes
Unix find in many respects). Can also find and list
the duplicate files on a hard disk even if there are
better, specialized programs in that particular
respect. An example of a very useful target command.
It lists all your *.txt files that have the word
"garbo" in them. For this you need also a grep.com.
Mine comes from a fully commercial package (TP 7.01).
TARGET -d *.txt -c"GREP -il garbo &f" | GREP "^File "
tcpy203c.zip TurboCopy, Speedy multi-volume file transfer
program. It is particularly useful if you often need
to copy material from hard disk to floppy or vice
versa. A small hitch is that the program muddles the
blink attribute. I am a bit hesitant about this
entry to my list. In general I wonder why fast
copying has not drawn more attention of the
programmers.
tel2308b.zip Some programs, whether good or less so, are a
practical necessity under certain conditions. NCSA
Telnet v2.3.08 is such a program. It is used for
Ethernet connections at our university's PC machines
for connecting to our Unix hosts. Recently the
Finnish universities decided to adopt the 8-bit
latin1 characters with Finnish a" a' o" twists which
not even MS-DOS Kermit cannot handle. One of our
programmers, Tuomas Eerola, did a great work of
adapting the translation tables and sources for
Telnet.
tlx322-?.zip Telix telecommunications package. There are many
excellent telecommunication packages on the scene,
and the choice is somewhat arbitrary between them.
Telix was one of the first with inbuilt Zmodem, and
its user interface is the most convenient I know.
None of the telecom progs is completely without
problems, and this goes for Telix, too. Another of
the fine telecommunication packages is TeleMate. The
most prevalent MS-DOS telecommunication program
would, however, seem to be the fully commercial
ProComm+. But when it comes to terminal emulation
rather than full telecommunication none of them can
touch the flexibility and power of MS-DOS Kermit.
tsrcom35.zip TSR utilities from TurboPower Software, also a must.
Most importantly includes mark, release, and mapmem
for unloading terminate and stay resident programs.
The veritable standard of TSR maintenance. I have
often advised the users of TSRs to apply mark /
release from tsrcom rather than using the TSRs' own
methods for removing them from the memory because of
the danger of leaving holes and finally crashing the
machine.
uuexe651.zip One of the methods of posting programs on Usenet is
to to uuencode the material so that it can be sent
as 7-bit ordinary text over the connections. This
format cam be used to deliver material by email and
in the binary postings newsgroups. There are many
programs which can convert such material back and
forth. Richards Marks' UUde/encode + XXde/encode is
the pick of the lot.
n16e12n.exe I am not a keen Windows user, and this an MS-DOS
best programs list. Still, I must conclude this list
by an obvious Windows selection: The Netscape
Navigator for WWW viewing. Beyond version 1.22 there
are 2+ beta test versions at the time of updating
this text. The 2+ version includes support for the
much discussed Java applets language and what
appears to be serious security problems. I may be
conservative, but I consider the development of Java
overrated in importance. Animated home pages are no
doubt fancy, but seldom add any real information
value.
....................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi Co-moderator of news:comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at ftp:// & http://garbo.uwasa.fi archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance ; University of Vaasa
ts@uwasa.fi http://uwasa.fi/~ts BBS 961-3170972; FIN-65101, Finland
