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Posted: 2013-11-21 02:44
by Drugwash
Steven W wrote:Wow. That certainly is a possibility. BTW, you have the RP9 source? That would be nice thing to have available.

I have been poking around, in my own way (not too seriously) and I believe that in addition to ctras.dll and GDI+ that the files browseui.dll, shdocvw.dll and shlwapi.dll will come into play here too.

Oh yeah, what registry keys were mentioned in that post?

Thanks for posting Drugwash! :D

Yes, I do have the RP9 sources; they were available at some point on Tihiy's old site and he posted the link at MSFN some time ago. They require VC6, PowerBasic7, Delphi 7, NASM. I do not know all the languages, I can only understand certain pieces of code. The (main) code dealing with ClearType is in ClearType.c but there's other pieces scattered around too. There are a lot of changes to comctl32.dll, gdi32.dll and user32.dll API.

It's late now and can't remember the registry keys RP9 uses, but I know it does check for the eBook key and if it doesn't exist, it loads the library directly, assuming it's somewhere in a location included in %PATH%. Usually it's in %windir%SYSTEM. Other registry keys may pertain solely to RP9, indicating whether ClearType is disabled or enabled and I do remember there are a couple of values that can be modified to alter ctras' behavior.

The problem with patching vs rebuilding from scratch is that first M$ do not release their sources and everything must be done through reverse engineering and second because there may be more versions of the same library and patching in place may be difficult or impossible while at the same time there may be unpatchable bugs or incomplete features in M$' libraries. And as TmEE said above, any unpleasant surprises can be avoided.

Either way, to do a proper job, one must have knowledge, time, dedication and ability to focus. Some people may do it out of passion, as a hobby, not for money but when the prerequisites are (temporarily or completely) missing it's hard to accomplish the task.

Here's the RP9 sources:
rp9source.rar
RP9 sources (original file)
(517.5 KiB) Downloaded 1043 times

Re: Windows 98 cleartype

Posted: 2015-11-21 21:53
by PROBLEMCHYLD
Here is an old version I put together without Revolution Pack, I actually got Tihiy permission and he said I could do what I want with it. It works, you just get a nag screen.

CLEARTYP.CAB
(89.49 KiB) Downloaded 931 times