2019.05.01 is faster with WordStar, but ...

[robertjsawyer]

A few quick tests show that the new 2019.05.01 release of vDos is indeed faster than older releases -- maybe 20% or more -- on at least some operations with WordStar (one test I did that showed a notable speed increase:  find every "e" in a 100,000-word file and replace it with a "z"). 

But, as the release notes indicate, something has changed about the way vDos handles system date and system time.  WordStar 7.0 has commands to insert these into the current document (^M@ and ^M!, respectively), and they worked fine under previous versions, but now insert nothing at all.

All best wishes.

Rob in Toronto

[Jos]

In a DOS PC we have a system clock running at 18.2 ticks/second, at which rate the BIOS/DOS time and date are updated.
In previous versions vDos got the time or date from Windows the moment a program requested those. So always out of sync with the actual system clock tick for at most one tick.
The change is merely that the BIOS/DOS time and date are now updated with the emulated system clock tick, not somewhere in between two ticks.

I tried ^M@ and ^M! with WordStar 7, both function as expected.

Jos

[emendelson]

The insert-date-time function works correctly under WordPerfect with the new version, as it did in all previous versions.

[robertjsawyer]

Very interesting! Date/time IS working now. I wonder if the problem was related to me trying it in my very first session with the new version of vDOS -- whether something had to be initialized by vDos. In subsequent invocations of vDos, the date/time functions are working now. Curious.

[Jos]

Curious indeed since vDos doesn’t modify/save anything out of itself to disk or the registry. Only exception is creating a vDos.log file if it is started with the log option.

Jos