Kosta and Tom are getting a lot help requests for DOSBox.

To help them I thought that we should start at the source of the problems.

DOSBox. What is wrong with it ? What it makes it so hard for (some) people to use it.

Some points.

• 1. DOSBox It's README:
  • 1a Is it too difficult ?
  • 1b Should it be advertised more actively by DOSBox ?
  • 1c Does DOSBox need more/different documentation ?
• 2. DOSBox has an startup message (that blue "window" with text in it).
  • 2a. What can be improved about that ?
• 3. Should DOSBox be more intelligent ?
  • 3a. automaticly mount your C drive if you type c: ?
  • 3b. if it detects that a drive is a cdrom -> automaticly mount it as "-t cdrom" ?
• 4. Your Points
  
• 5. Your Ideas

Please give constructive ideas.
not things like: Their readme sucks!
more like: the readme is hard to read because .... and they should change it too...........



If we can make some good recommendations Tom will mail them to the DOSBox.crew
(He has some contacts with them because of the reloaded website)

LOL

Thanks for putting this topic up, man.

I forgot all about it, after mentioning it to you some time ago. My mind has been to full of exam-related stuff lately.


Anyways....
Yes, I have some contact with Qbix of the DOSBox crew, and when I mentioned to him that Kosta and myself get a lot of e-mails regarding how to use DOSBox, it became obvious to him that the program could be improved.

I told him that I would open a topic, and ask for some help from the public. Then I would give him the feedback. Sadly I had forgotten all about it.


Luckily you didn't forget, good thing I mentioned it to you! :cheers:




But yeah.
We should collect some ideas on how to improve the program, and I will deliver it to Qbix.

No problem Tom.
Let's hope that everybody has something useful to add.

Maybe they could add some sort of auto-mount

'Use case' (sort of)
Or something. This for people that don't want to specify anthing.

An extra option to the mount command could also be nice. Say you have just unzipped sq5 to a certain folder. You fire up DOSBOx but don't want to mount the root and cd through them or don't feel like typing the whole path:

I still think that we should merge all the important topics into one, like this one for example. Giving hints for DOSBox in it would be wonderfull.

For the problem at hand tough I feel the real problem is Windows native people trying to play with DOS commands. Altough it looks like it would solve the problem if we could create a kind of automaton which give out commands instead of the user it would give out the two following problems;

1. The users will never truely learn how to use DOS and thus kind of miss the point of this site and
2. By doing this we would just create a new "Windows" version which is compatible with old DOS games.

More over, I hardly beleive someone willing to read will not be able to understand if they are sent to the Newbie Guide to DOSBox. Then the only group of people who should not understand is those with poor english skill. If this is a problem then I propose it is translated in a different language then, and that problem should be solved.

Finnaly, I am pretty clueless on how you could "improve" the program yourself. You might give pointers to the program authors, you could write as much FAQ's as you want, in the long run you'll only improve the amount of people being able to use DOSBox right, not improving the program by itself...

Edit: To answer the questions asked by Data:1a: No.
1b: I have no idea. Is that our problem first of all? It's hard to advertise it more than it is already when you think it comes with all the program versions...
1c: I don't see why. The Readme.txt is fine by itself and there is already a kind of "DOSBox for Dummies" (Aka, the Newbie Guide for DOSBox) which is essentially the graphical version of the Readme.txt.

2a: Unless you want to edit it yourself and host it on this site then I don't see how it could be improved. If you are willing to do the aforementoned option tough, adding a FAQ somewhere on this board and putting the link in the startup screen could be a great asset to newbies.

3a: I don't see why. Unless you want a very specialised startup for the same game (or bunch of game) you won't want to have it done on startup. I myself never use it twice for the same game so I don't mind typing everything, not to say that it's far from a long type anyway. It is probably nostalgia, but I tend to beleive that's also a kind of flexibility from the program that I like to see. Anyone utterly annoyed by the newbie help of Windows XP will understand me on this point.
3b: Joining 3a, I don't think that's necessary. If it was possible then put it as an option since some game won't need it and it could possibly take up memory for nothing or mess up some odd games for no reason.

4 and 5: Already done that in the first part of this post.

I think you missed the point slightly there Eagle, this was intended for suggestions to be passed to the DOSBox team as well as for the forum here. (Tom has some contact - he interviewed them for AR).

In my experience there are 2 kinds of people using DOSBox who are active in here; those who have used DOS and try to understand how it does what it does, and those who just want to play a particular game - the former are happy to work it out for themselves (I personally managed to work it out by reading the readme and the guide we have on here) and it's the latter group who tend to post requests for help, and I think ideas like Reup's might be good for them. Even DFend requires a basic understanding in order to set up for each game (although it streamlines use after that) - for someone who isn't very computer literate, doesn't speak English as their first language or simply has difficulty following instructions with more than 2 steps, or who has never had to use a command prompt, DOSBox can be pretty daunting; not everyone enjoys the challenge of getting something to run as much as you or I do, they just want the instant gratification of playing the game - if there are simple effective ways to help them get it, why not implement them?

I understand your arguments and already covered them a little... But you will never manage to make me think that the Readme.txt is too complicated. Even a 8 years old boy or girl could understand it.

The problem doesn't stop there. If you want to play with old games then you'll have to play with the old interfaces. Those game interfaces are as dated and frustrating as DOS commands can be. Not to say that most of the time you don't have Online Help like almost all modern games!

This said, would we really help the under average computer users by giving them the tools to start old games without a breeze... Only to be frustrated and shocked by the actual game complexity because they don't have the patience, experience and will to actually play those kind of games?

Sorry, my own answer would be no.

I think one of the main problems is that people either don't read it or stop too fast while reading it, so I think we should "focus" on how the dosbox authors can make more people actually read/finish the readme. (or provide another way of documentation which is harder to miss. (like more intro commands))

The Startup message (blue box) can actually be changed by anybody. dosbox allows it's messages to be overriden by a language file. So we could create one that we think is better.

Dosbox only comes with a readme. The graphical guides are not present in the default instalation. (suggestion?)

We all know that some people are just too dumb, but that is fact and we can not change that. This thread is an attempt to make them use dosbox as well as it saves kosta and tom an email on how to use it.

I'd say that the readme is allright as it is, but before the first startup of the program after the installation, a "lite" idiot-proof version should be displayed, covering most common problems of dosbox newbies and their solutions (like "why the hell do I get a Z drive and cannot enter C???".

I don't think it can be improved. Though to speak the truth I don't really like it at all... it reminds that it's only an emulation.
Yes, but only if no drive has been mounted in autoexec or mounted before.

Definitely. That would be a major improvement.

It would be great if the settings could be altered "on the fly" straight from DB command line. As it is currently, closing DB, altering the settings and then re-runing it umpteenth time over can get on someone's nerves.
Not certain if it can really be possible to execute, though.

I tend to click those popping up readme's away.
Maybe a short idiot proof inside dosbox ? that pops up at the first wrong typed command. (that will annoy a lot people though)