Greetings! Hopefully what you read will get you as excited as it does with me! Sox is a graphical user interface for the mulititasking LUnix Next Generation operating system. Here is a list of some of its features:
The target machine for this project is a stock C64 with a joystick & disk drive. Recommended options include a REU, mouse, S-Video monitor, and a fast disk drive or two. I'll also knock out a C128 version as soon as LUnix supports it.
I finally came up with a decent window design that can work without borders. By doing this, a full-screen window can contain up to 80x28 characters, everything falls quite nicely onto the 8x8 pixel color cells, and it removes a drawing step from window refreshes. Hopefully this can be the most bloat-free GUI around, keeping precious memory and clock cycles where they belong (in user space), as well as looking pretty darn good.
The above screenshot was taken from a QuickBASIC conversion of the BASIC 7.0 development code, using VicSim to maintain a VIC-II screen. The source is getting a little too hairy to work with using the C= BASIC editor. :-/
I don't really see Sox as direct competition for GEOS, as there's fundamental differences between the two, and each has different strengths and weaknesses. Let's look at how they match up.
| Full color environment | Wheels & Megapatch give more color |
| Faster bitmap text & graphics | More fonts and font options |
| Free | Commercial software, quality commercial apps |
| Preemptive multitasking | Less CPU overhead, taskswitchers available |
| Better memory support | Better printer support |
| High-level programmability | Low-level programmability |
Yes, Sox will be free, and will come with a text editor, paint program, file manager, and such things. Programming information will be online, and writing Sox-compatible software with Daniel's LUnix commmand-line development programs will still be available. I'm also planning to offer a professionally printed programmer's manual (I can do it cheaply at work), and a complete GUI developer's kit for a small fee.
I'd love to hear suggestions on what you'd like to see, what you'd rather not see, or what hacks/mods/software should be supported. Click the "E-mail me" link below and send me an e-mail!
