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35-455: Early personal information managers, such as Norton Desktop and Borland's Sidekick , provided pop-up calculator, alarm, calendar and other functions for single-tasking operating systems like MS-DOS using terminate-and-stay-resident techniques . Introduced in 1984 as part of the operating system for the Apple Macintosh computer, a Desk Accessory (DA) was a piece of software written as

70-452: A text-based user interface for managing files on top of MS-DOS . It was officially produced between 1986 and 1998. The last MS-DOS version of Norton Commander, 5.51, was released on July 1, 1998. A related product, Norton Desktop , a graphical shell for MS-DOS and Windows, succeeded Norton Commander. It came in two variants, Norton Desktop for DOS and Norton Desktop for Windows . John Socha started work on Norton Commander in 1984; at

105-496: A crowded hard disk is a breeze". There are several programs that follow the style of Norton Commander. Examples are: GEOS (8-bit operating system) GEOS ( G raphic E nvironment O perating S ystem ) is a discontinued operating system from Berkeley Softworks (later GeoWorks ). Originally designed for the Commodore 64 with its version being released in 1986, enhanced versions of GEOS later became available in 1987 for

140-465: A device driver, conforming to a particular programming model. The purpose of this model was to permit very small helper-type applications to be run concurrently with any other application on the system. This provided a small degree of multitasking on a system that initially did not have any other multitasking ability. DAs were implemented as a special class of driver . It was installed in the driver queue, and given time periodically and co-operatively as

175-453: A list of commands that are extended on demand by the CTRL and ALT keys. Thus, without heavy use of the mouse (although mouse functionality was integrated around version 3.0), the user is able to perform many file manipulation actions quickly and efficiently. Additionally, it also includes a built-in text file viewer (invoked with F3 key) and text file editor (invoked with F4 key). Norton Commander

210-520: A matter of placing the .ACC in the correct directory - \GEMBOOT in earlier versions, and \GEMAPPS\GEMSYS in GEM/3 and later. Since each desk accessory loaded reduced the amount of memory available for programs, one technique for temporarily increasing available space was to rename one or more .ACC files to have a different suffix (usually .ACX) and restart GEM. On the Amstrad PC-1512 , for example,

245-613: A result of the host application calling SystemTask() within its main loop . A DA was permitted to have a user interface as long as it was confined to one main window. A special window frame with black title bar and rounded corners was reserved for the use of DAs so that the user could distinguish it from the windows of the hosting application. Typical early DAs included the Calculator and Alarm Clock. The control panel , Chooser , and Scrapbook were initially implemented as DAs. Third-party DAs such as spelling checkers could be purchased. It

280-483: A single 'code' #1000 resource that contains the binary code implementing the desk accessory. Global or static variables are not available, but a DA can call user interface APIs. It is possible for a DA to have user interface resources in its database. The desk accessory launcher transfers execution to the first byte of the 'code' #1000 resource. DAs provide a modicum of multitasking. However, unlike in Mac OS and GEM, after

315-415: A spreadsheet called geoCalc. While geoPublish is not as sophisticated as Aldus Pagemaker and geoCalc not as sophisticated as Microsoft Excel , the packages provide reasonable functionality, and Berkeley Softworks founder Brian Dougherty claimed the company ran its business using its own software on Commodore 8-bit computers for several years. Written by a group of programmers at Berkeley Softworks ,

350-463: A success, so the key PNC resources had been diverted, while new programmers for the Windows platform were hired. Enrique Salem (who eventually became Symantec's CEO) led the development of a Windows shell replacement for Windows File Manager and Program Manager released as Norton Desktop for Windows. Norton Commander for Windows was a Windows 95 variant of the classical DOS file manager. Version 1.0

385-556: Is Breadbox Ensemble . Revivals were seen in the OmniGo handhelds, Brother GeoBook line of laptop-appliances, and the NewDeal Office package for PCs. Related code found its way to earlier "Zoomer" PDAs, creating an unclear lineage to Palm, Inc. 's later work. Nokia used GEOS as a base operating system for their Nokia Communicator series, before switching to EPOC ( Symbian ). On August 19, 2016, Michael Steil posted in his blog that

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420-657: The Commodore 128 and in 1988 for the Apple II . A lesser-known version was also released for the Commodore Plus/4 . GEOS closely resembles early versions of the classic Mac OS and includes a graphical word processor (geoWrite) and paint program (geoPaint). A December 1987 survey by the Commodore-dedicated magazine Compute!'s Gazette found that nearly half of respondents used GEOS. For many years, Commodore bundled GEOS with its redesigned and cost-reduced C64,

455-451: The Macintosh .) From a programming point of view, desk accessories were implemented, like other GEM applications, as DOS .EXE files , with names ending with .ACC (Accessory) rather than .APP (Application). Each .ACC file could support multiple accessories; all three of the standard GEM accessories (Calculator, Clock and Print Spooler) were provided by CALCLOCK.ACC . Installation was simply

490-527: The C64 and C128, GEOS takes full advantage of many of the add-ons and improvements available for these systems. Commodore's 1351 mouse is supported by GEOS, as are its various RAM expansion units . GEOS 128 also fully supports the C128's 640×200 high-resolution VDC display mode through a compatible RGB monitor. The C64 version of GEOS incorporates a built-in fast loader , called diskTurbo , that significantly increases

525-451: The C64C. At its peak, GEOS was the third-most-popular microcomputer operating system in the world in terms of units shipped, trailing only MS-DOS and Mac OS (besides the original Commodore 64's KERNAL ). Other GEOS-compatible software packages were available from Berkeley Softworks or from third parties, including a reasonably sophisticated desktop publishing application called geoPublish and

560-631: The Commodore serial bus, GEOS supports a wide variety of printers, including HP PCL printers and the Apple LaserWriter . This ability to print to high-end printers was a major factor in making GEOS a desktop publishing platform. The Apple II version of GEOS was released as freeware in August 2003. The Commodore 64/128 versions followed in February 2004. The latest GEOS desktop suite for IBM PC compatibles

595-541: The GEOS Design Team: Jim DeFrisco, Dave Durran, Michael Farr, Doug Fults, Chris Hawley, Clayton Jung, and Tony Requist, led by Dougherty, who cut their teeth on limited-resource video game machines such as the Atari 2600 , GEOS was revered for what it could accomplish on machines with 64–128  kB of RAM memory and 1–2  MHz of 8-bit processing power. Unlike many pieces of proprietary software for

630-517: The Norton Commander. Network Utilities allows for viewing devices and systems on network, connecting to remote systems, mapping network drives , network monitoring, and more. Norton Commander is little changed from previous versions, and includes file compression /de-compression of various formats, network utilities access, disk cleanup, files and folder compare, FTP connection management, and more. The last Windows version of Norton Commander

665-631: The Snapshot accessory was shipped as SNAPSHOT.ACX and had to be renamed to .ACC prior to use. Desk accessories continued to be supported in ViewMAX , the DR-DOS file manager, which was supplied with almost unchanged versions of Calculator and Clock. For much the same reason as desk accessories were used in Mac OS and in GEM, namely to allow more than one simultaneous program on a system which did not support multitasking,

700-448: The advent of System 7 , which included a standard cooperative multitasking feature, the need for DAs diminished greatly, and developers were encouraged to develop small applications instead. The system continued to run DAs (and still does up to Mac OS 9 .x) for backward compatibility. Under System 7 and later, DAs could be moved and renamed using the Finder like normal applications, removing

735-446: The concept of desk accessories was extended to Palm OS by third-party developers. DA are applets launched by an application or hack serving as a DA launcher. The DA launcher may watch for keystrokes or other system events and pop up a predefined desk accessory. Many general-purpose Palm OS launcher applications are capable of launching DAs as well. A desk accessory program is a Palm resource database of type 'DAcc', specified to include

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770-433: The need for Font/DA Mover and confining suitcases to font management. When a DA was run under System 7, it always executed in the Finder's address space . The icon for a desk accessory program under System 7 and later is roughly a reversed version of the application icon, with the writing hand on the left side instead of the right. A similar mechanism to allow small utility programs to run along with regular applications

805-477: The source code for GEOS 2.0 for Commodore C64 had been fully reverse-engineered and suitable for the cc65 compiler suite. The reverse-engineered source code has been made available at GitHub . Dozens of official and third-party applications and other products were produced for GEOS. Among the most important and popular were the following: Personal Computer World in January 1987 favorably reviewed version 1.2 for

840-565: The speed of drive access on the slow 1541 . GEOS is the first Commodore software that could use a floppy disk as swap space or virtual memory . GEOS 128 can take advantage of the C128's enhanced "burst mode" in conjunction with the 1571 and 1581 drives. The Commodore version of GEOS uses a copy protection scheme that renders users' disks unbootable if it detects that the disk has been illegally duplicated. Via Berkeley's special geoCable interface converter or other third-party interfaces to connect standard RS-232 or Centronics printers to

875-432: The standard Windows APIs . In order to preserve LFNs while working in real mode , Norton Commander 5.51 required the use of a terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) utility. Norton Commander did not have native support for LFNs in real mode and would truncate them. According to former Peter Norton Group developer Mark Lawler, after Symantec had acquired Peter Norton Computing, Symantec had speculated Microsoft Windows would be

910-408: The time, he called it "Visual DOS" or "VDOS". Norton Commander was easy to use because it had a constant view of two file manipulation objects at once. After starting the program the user sees two panels with file lists. Each panel can be easily configured to show information about the other panel, a directory tree , or a number of other options. At the bottom of the screen, Norton Commander displays

945-477: The user could not drag and drop DAs into or out of the system. They resided in the System file's 'DRVR' resources , like actual drivers, though they could be installed in any file whose resources were loaded into the memory, and were stored in "suitcases" when not installed in the system file. If installed within a separate application, such as MacWrite, their functionality would be accessible only when that application

980-528: The user is done working with the DA, it must be closed to return to the underlying application. It is possible to pop up one DA over another DA, though this might deplete stack space. Norton Desktop Norton Commander ( NC ) is a discontinued prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing (later acquired in 1990 by the Symantec corporation). NC provides

1015-550: Was 2.01. Version 1.0 was released in December 1992. It supports OS/2 2.0 with HPFS or FAT file system. It does not include the command prompt found in other versions of Norton Commander. In June 1993, Symantec lowered the price of Norton Commander for OS/2 to $ 49, and soon ceased sales. BYTE in 1989 listed Norton Commander 2.0 for DOS as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards, stating that "navigating through

1050-446: Was active). As a resource numbering scheme was implemented for marking resources as belonging to another resource of some particular type and number in the same file, such as a DA ('DRVR'), it was possible for desk accessories to have a limited "resource fork" of their own within the file they were contained in; the mover utility recognised such resources and moved them along with the actual DA code resource they were associated with. With

1085-505: Was also present in the operating system for the Apple IIGS and Apple IIe . GEM resembled the Macintosh closely in many respects. One example was the presence of desk accessories, for the same reason: to allow multiple programs to be used in a system that only supported one full application at a time (although GEM desk accessories used task switching and not cooperative multitasking like

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1120-430: Was considered hard to write a DA, especially early on when there was little in the way of developer tools. However, since on the early Mac OS drivers did not have any special privileges, writing a DA was, with practice, no more difficult than any other application. A special Font/DA Mover utility was used to change the configuration of DAs. Because DAs were not installed or launched in the same way that applications were,

1155-542: Was first released in 1996. It supported both Windows 95 and Windows NT . This version fully integrated with Windows features such as the Recycle Bin and Quick View . Quick View feature was supported via the included basic Quick View Plus. Version 1.02 added Windows 98 support. Version 2.0 was released in 2000. It supports Windows 2000 and functions under Windows XP , Windows Vista , and Windows 7 . Installer included Network Utilities, Norton Commander Scheduler, and

1190-694: Was running. That is, a desk accessory installed as a resource within an application would appear on the Apple menu as a desk accessory only when that application was active. It could then be activated while the application was run and would then disappear when the application was terminated through the Quit function. (Similarly, the FKEY resources could be installed either within the System so as to be universally available, or within an application so as to be available only when that application

1225-538: Was very popular during the DOS era and it has been extensively cloned. For example, the IntelliJ IDE used to include a "Commander" plugin that performed file manipulation using the same shortcut keys as Norton Commander but the plugin is now obsolete. Windows 95 included a new graphical shell called Windows Explorer and supported long filenames (LFN). Symantec released Norton Commander 5.51 to support long filenames using

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