Dos Navigator

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DOS Navigator

Dos Navigator is a free orthodox File Manager for DOS and Windows.

1 History
2 Life after Dos Navigator
3 NDN - Necromancer's DOS Navigator
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

The initial version of DN I (v 0.90) was released in 1991 and written by Stefan Tanurkov, Andrew Zabolotny and Sergey Melnik (all from Kishinev, Moldavia). After that DN was rewritten using TurboVision by Stefan Tanurkov and Dmitry Dotsenko (Dmitry did develop DN in Moscow State University). These versions are sometimes referred as DN II.

In 1993 Slava Filimonov invited Stefan to join RitLabs (former RIT S.R.L) in order to continue producing and publishing DN with joint efforts. Slava also contributed programming new components, design and made countless optimizations and improvements. He wrote new software key protection system which remained unbreakable for almost 4 years after it's introduction. DN as a nice example of DOS cracking.

DN II was actively developed till the beginning of 1995 (until the version 1.35 that should be considered as a milestone in the OFM implementations). Several other programmers participated in the development after the version 1.35. Starting from version 1.37 Slava Filimonov and Ilya Bagdasarov were in charge for bug fixing. Slava and Ilya Bagdasarov solely maintained, developed and released versions 1.37 through 1.39. After they left, DN was maintained again by Stefan and newly acquired developer - Maxim Masiutin.

In 1998 the development mostly took bugfixing direction as RITlabs new product The Bat! became a more promising software product with much better commercial potential.

The latest shareware version was 1.50. Then, in late 1999, RitLabs decided to make version 1.51 of the Dos Navigator completely free with freely available source code.

[edit] Life after Dos Navigator

Andrew Zabolotny currently works for a company in Russia. He also contributed to several open source projects, including Crystal Space.

Stefan Tanurkov and Maxim Masiutin are still employed at RitLabs, developing The Bat!

In 1998 Slava Filimonov wrote another file manager windows for MRP Informatics, a company in Czech Republic. This project is discontinued now.

Other groups still release software based on the DN open source code, including new features such as support for long file names, and support for Linux.

DN 1.51 650KB Win32 OS/2 - Sources (Virtual Pascal) (972,655)

DOS Navigator Open Source Project DN OSP 6.4.0 1MB DOS/DPMI(Win9x)

DN 4.9.0 2004 for DOS included in UBCD v3.4.

[edit] NDN - Necromancer's DOS Navigator

(Perhaps this secton should be moved to a separate article.)

NDN is developed out of the famous DOS NAVIGATOR 1.51 source code by RIT-Labs. Necromancer and a lot of other people packed this Norton Commander-clone with features, which are listed so you can get a little feeling of what NDN is capable of. At the moment there are 3 target platforms of NDN developed: DPMI32, WIN32 (w9x, WNT+), LINUX. Btw, NDN complies to a lot of the standards introduced on (http://www.softpanorama.org).

Provided versions:

D32: This is the version to use in DOS/W98, it has the most features of all of the 3 currently developed targets. It is stable and fast, but unfortunately it cannot be used easily in WinNT/2k/XP anymore as in W9x because NT doesn't support the old WINDOWSAPIs , but it will still be worked on.

W32: Recommended for NT/2K/XP. It works faster and more stable in NT based OS's. Clipboard/Mouse works (D32 doesn't in NT+). Not as much features as D32, but lots of new things are planned!

LNX: The LINUX version is in very early stage, but it looks very promising (an OS like LINUX cannot be easily supported like DOS and WINDOWS). MC is good and stable, BUT it has less possibilities than NDN (f.ex.): VIEWER/EDITOR, options/customizations, FILE FIND.... A lot of work will flow into this port in the near future...

Last stable version: 2.15 Build 4000 (2005) (included in UBCD v3.4)

NDN Lead Programmer is Stefan Weber. Necromancer's DOS Navigator project is initiated, managed and hosted by Muxe Inc. company. The project is partly open sourced. To join the developers team you have to contact us.

NDN may be the version of Dos Navigator with the most current active ongoing support (2006).