[comp.sys.atari.st] HDB V2.4 and GEMBOOT V1.11

XBR4D76H@DDATHD21.BITNET (07/27/87)

The HDB printer problem (wrong initialization of the printer strobe line)
has been fixed in version 2.4.

GEMBOOT V1.11 has some new options and improvements
 - free cache space for new folders can be reserved with variable
   FOLDERRES
 - "ENVBUFSIZE=0" disables the DESKTOP environment buffer option and
   leads to a normal startup of DESKTOP (useful with MSH)
 - bug in GEMFRL.TOS fixed

There is still the outstanding problem with the two incompatible
environment string formats used by GEMBOOT (a) and MSH (b).

a) <variable>=<value>\0....<variable>=<value>\0\0
b) <variable>=\0<value>\0....<variable>=\0<value>\0\0

The only definition I found was in the GEMDOS Reference Manual:
> 0x4D Pexec - Load/Execute Process
> ...
>   "string1\0"
>   "string2\0"
>   ... etc ...
>   "stringN\0"
>     "\0"
> The environment string is any number of null-terminated strings, with
> an empty string (a single null) at the end.
> ...
The compatibility problem arises from the lack of preciseness in the
definition of "stringN".

Please, would someone at ATARI (Allan?) fling a coin and make a decision
which one (a,b or whatever) is the standard ST environment string format!!!

Meanwhile MSH user may disable the GEMBOOT option (DESKTOP env. buffer)
by "ENVBUFSIZE=0".

  Konrad A. Hahn
  BITNET: XBR4D76H@DDATHD21