The original Cats library was written in 2000 to replicate the Unix catgets message catalog system - so FreeDOS programs could support different spoken languages. The Cats implementation was later improved on by others to create a simpler, smaller Kitten library with wrappers that made it compatible with Cats. Now, Tom Ehlert has created a newer, smaller implementation of Kitten:

"KITTENC - catgets/kittengets compatible resource compiler. KITTENC 'compiles' language resources to strings and attaches these strings to the executable program such that the program can retrieve these strings at execution time. This way it is enough to copy a file to another place without taking care that the resources (in the NLS directory) are also copied." This saves a lot of disk space compared old KITTEN/NLS approach, and saves a few bytes for each message translation. You can find the new version at kittenc1.zip {zip file} and we've mirrored it at the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /files/devel/libs/kitten as kittenc1.zip

You might know Lynx, the text-based web browser. Karen shared news that the Lynx browser development version has been updated to 2.9.0dev.8. What's new in this release: * regenerated lynx.pot, sent to translation project -TD * align options in rpm/deb test-packages -TD * change keyword-matching in Lynx's special URLs such as LYNXDOWNLOAD to use case-insensitive matching to work around idn2's conversion -TD * build-fix for idn library vs idn2 (report by GV). It's available at https://lynx.invisible-island.net/

You might know that we have a YouTube channel where I post videos about FreeDOS, or play DOS games, or show how to write your own DOS programs. If you don't follow the channel, I wanted to highlight a few recent videos: When we released FreeDOS 1.3 RC4, I shared several videos to provide an overview of RC4, installing RC4, and using the advanced installer. More recently, I recorded a video about how to use GNUCHCP from FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 to change the display font. I also like to show some DOS games on FreeDOS. Someone suggested I try Little Willy, a 2D platformer. And this weekend, I posted a video about Acronia, a 2D shooter from the DOS Games Jam. The "programming" videos have been popular, and I recently posted videos about writing an extended ASCII table and how to program a chess board.

Can you run Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS? Until now, you could only run Windows 3.1 in Standard mode on FreeDOS. But thanks to recent work on the FreeDOS kernel, you can run Windows 3.1 in Enhanced mode on FreeDOS. Check out Jeremy's video, showing the latest FreeDOS kernel running Windows 3.1 in Enhanced and Standard mode. More info from Jeremy about the updated kernel: "I haven't pushed the changes to the public GitHub repository yet as there are still some rough edges to fix (all the changes are technically there, just in the old unstable branch). I will make a test version (with source) available later this week along with steps to run Windows. ... For the technical aspect - the changes are minimal to the kernel, added support for a few int 2F function calls that were never merged in was about all it took. All significant changes behind a WIN31SUPPORT #ifdef so doesn't need to be compiled in if unwanted." Thanks Jeremy!

MicroWeb is a web browser for DOS! It is a 16-bit real mode application, designed to run on minimal hardware. This is text-only, but runs in graphics mode. HTTP only, not HTTPS. No CSS or Javascript, but supports direct formatting. The Alpha release 0.5 now includes support for CGA, EGA, VGA and Hercules display modes. Note that in Hercules mode, the mouse cursor is currently not visible. Several improvements to parsing and rendering. Images are now displayed as boxes with alt tag text. Also includes a boot disk images with a minimal FreeDOS install and NE2000 packet driver. You can find it at MicroWeb releases on GitHub.

FreeCOM is the FreeDOS COMMAND shell. Jeremy writes: "The release provides multiple variants, recommended is one of the Open Watcom xms-swap versions. This release fixes a regression with IF ERRORLEVEL in the 0.85 release and a regression that prevented the debug builds from working. Other changes are minor and mostly documentation updates. ... The files with ow are built with Open Watcom (default compiler), the files with bc are built with Borland C/C++ 3, and the files with gcc are built with GCC (ia16). Currently only xms-swap GCC (ia16) built version is provided, please see artifacts from automatic builds for latest builds with GCC. ... If you are unsure, download either the command.zip or ow-English.zip and use the xms-swap version." You can find the new release at FreeCOM GitHub. We've also mirrored the files on the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /files/dos/command/0.85a/