SIMPL-DOS



SIMPL-DOS (pronounced as "SIMPLE DOS", IPA: "sɪmpəlˈdɒs"; often shortened to SIMPL or S-D) is a desktop helper project started by Matthew Petry (fire219) and developed by the SIMPL-DOS Team. A few months after 0.47's release (and immediately after the announcement of SIMPL-DOS's Bash port), Fire219 stepped down as owner and maintainer of the project. As a result, WindozeNT now owns and maintains SIMPL-DOS.

Spinoffs, Derivatives, and Ports
SIMPL-DOS has had a small number of derivatives, all (or most) discontinued, as well as a few ports to other systems or programming languages, which include:

Bash port and SIMPL-DOS For iPad
On June 26, 2014, WindozeNT announced a Bash port of SIMPL-DOS and SIMPL-DOS For iPad, a version of the Bash port formatted for the iPad's display. The new port contained most of the commands from the original Batch version. Commands that opened a file or graphical applications, or commands that modified the terminal were removed as they could not be reliably implemented. This port is the only version of SIMPL-DOS to have a crash handler (due to Bash allowing scripts to handle crashes themselves).

CAT-DOS
CAT-DOS was an early version of Cyber-DOS (see below) made in 2010 by Justin Petry, designed to be a competitor to SIMPL-DOS. It only made it to version 0.2 before getting discontinued, and had no popularity at all in its lifetime.

Cyber-DOS
In late 2010, Matthew's brother, Justin Petry (Soft319) attempted to create a direct competitor to SIMPL-DOS and a successor to his previous project CAT-DOS. It never got past its initial version and was very quickly overshadowed by SIMPL-DOS. Because of this, it was discontinued.

ExplodiDOS
ExplodiDOS was a project inspired by SIMPL-DOS, made by (later to be) SIMPL-DOS Team member ThePCKid. It contained less commands and was less useful than SIMPL-DOS. The project received a total of 3 updates before getting discontinued, each respective update released the day after the release of the version it replaced. Additionally, unlike SIMPL-DOS, ExplodiDOS did not use typical version numbers (like 0.1, etc.) but instead versioned itself with the date that the version in question was released.

Disk Operating Environment (DOE)
DOE (short for Disk Operating Environment) is a project derived from SIMPL-DOS Bootable and developed by WindozeNT Software. The idea for DOE was to build a better, much more powerful version of Bootable while still retaining SIMPL-DOS's "fits on one 1.44MB floppy" motif and at the same time trying to offer more power and usefulness than an average MS-DOS installation. Development began on DOE shortly after WindozeNT's release of desktop SIMPL-DOS 0.42. However, the source code and related files were inadvertently lost when he accidentally deleted them permanently. Since then, the project's status is at a complete standstill though not necessarily discontinued.

SIMPL-DOS Bootable
SIMPL-DOS Bootable (often shortened to Bootable) was a version of SIMPL-DOS 0.38.5 created by fire219 and Skirmisher that was rewritten and designed to boot as a standalone operating system, rather than rely on Windows' command interpreter like usual. It was basically a modified version of the SIMPL-DOS batch file running on top of a minimalistic installation of FreeDOS. It was never updated to support any of the 0.4x kernels. The project was discontinued after its first and only release.

SIMPL-DOS For Scratch
SIMPL-DOS For Scratch is a pseudo-direct port of SIMPL-DOS written entirely in Scratch and written by WindozeNT. It included most commands contained in the desktop version, and simply eliminated ones that could not be implemented in Scratch (like SAM or FileSnake).

SIMPL-DOS For TI
SIMPL-DOS For TI is a pseudo-direct port of SIMPL-DOS written entirely in TI-BASIC for compatible TI graphing calculators, written by WindozeNT. It included many commands from the desktop version; commands that couldn't be implemented on the calculators would only output "NOT SUPPORTED." if run.

SIMPL-DOS X
SIMPL-DOS X was a version of SIMPL-DOS written in Visual Basic 2010 by SIMPL-DOS Team member OB6160. The project had only one release, v0.1 Beta, and was immediately discontinued afterward, due to the Alpha-Delta Foundation development group falling apart.

SIMPL-GUI
SIMPL-GUI, as the name implied, was a graphical frontend designed for SIMPL-DOS v0.38.5 and compatibles created by WindozeNT. The goal was to make SIMPL-DOS "even easier to use". For a brief time after he announced work on the project, WindozeNT posted screenshots and details on the project and explained how it would work. He said he would release a developer preview of the software soon, with a final release expected a few weeks after the DP release. However, neither editions of the software were released and the project was completely cancelled and discontinued.

Development Stages
Format: Version: Description/programmer (other info)

0.1-0.29: Private alpha builds made by fire219 with small contributions by various testers.

0.30: SIMPL-DOS's initial public release. (SIMPL-DOS site created)

0.33-0.35: Public builds by fire219 (meowmeow55 joins the SIMPL-DOS Team)

0.36-0.36.1: Public builds by meowmeow55. These are the first releases not made by Fire219.

0.38-0.40: Public builds by fire219 and ProgrammingFreak (At 0.38.5's release, WindozeNT joins the SIMPL-DOS Team)

0.42-0.44: Public builds by WindozeNT.

0.45: Public build by fire219 and WindozeNT. 0.46-0.47: Public builds by WindozeNT.