Currently, Boxer is an applescript wrapper for the standard DOSBox.app. When you run Boxer it inspects the file/folder you're opening with it, chooses an appropriate DOSBox configuration, sniffs the current user language, then feeds the appropriate settings to DOSBox for launch. Boxer automatically creates per-user preference files for itself if none are present, so there's no installation or initial setup hassles.

Boxer will probably evolve into a fully-fledged Cocoa GUI application (coded in a proper language) which wraps DOSBox completely: using individual DOSBox processes as its document windows, giving you proper menus for controlling the focused window, and preferences panels for tweaking global/game-specific settings. That's quite far away though, and will almost certainly require its own fork of DOSBox.

On a more practical note for the developers of the Mac DOSBox port: most of what Boxer does to make DOSBox behave better on the Mac could be done instead by DOSBox.app itself.

For instance, making DOSBox.app open files or folders from Finder (or by drag-and-drop) simply involves modifying the Info.plist file inside the package to add the appropriate filetype keys for exe/com/bat files and folders. Indeed, you could just cut-and-paste keys from Boxer's Info.plist in order to do so.

Boxer makes the following changes to the default DOSBox Preferences file:

-"output" changed from "surface" to "openglnb" because surface prevents OS X from taking screenshots of the DOSBox window (instead the window appears empty.)

-"mapperfile" changed to point to a file in the current user's preferences folder. Otherwise, DOSBox.app will create mapper.txt files in the current location of DOSBox.app, which is usually Applications.

-"capture" changed from "/tmp" to the current user's desktop folder. This is where screenshots go by default in OS X. (/tmp isn't even visible in Finder, so most users won't know how to access their screenshots!)

-"autolock" changed from true to false. The majority of games function just fine without it, and it's a major scare for new users if their mouse cursor suddenly disappears with no advice on how to get it back - especially if Cmd-Q doesn't work (which it doesn't in DOSBox.app by default - Boxer implements it with a custom keymapper file.)

In addition, Boxer uses the ".conf" file extension for config files instead of no extension. The recommended best practice for modern OS X applications is to always include a file extension, and this makes it easier to interoperate with DOSBox config files from other OSes. Boxer's Info.plist file "educates" OS X that .conf files are plaintext - this makes them show an icon preview and open in TextEdit by default.

Welcome to VOGONS Vigil.

I am sure some of the information you mentioned will be of great help to the other developers doing Mac OSX stuff. They might be good at C++ development, but if they have learned C++ programming on a different platfor (e.g. Linux) they might lack some of the insight in how good Mac OSX should behave.

By combining and sharing this information, everyone in the MacOSX / DOSBox community will benefit.

We don't own a Mac ourselves, so the contents of DOSBox.app package are handled by the one who makes the packages for dosbox on release time. (currently rhoenie). The preferences file is user submitted (the name).

Do you recommended a different name for it ?

With screenshots failing I presume you mean not the screenshots created by dosbox if you press ctrl-f5 ?

Ah ok...if this isn't an appropriate forum for suggesting fixes to the Mac port, could you tell me where to send those suggestions?

The Mac port by default looks for a configuration file called "DOSBox Preferences" (no extension) in the user's preferences folder. I think it would be better to change this back to dosbox.conf or to DOSBox Preferences.conf.

Regarding the screenshot bug - DOSBox's own (Ctrl-F5) screenshots work ok, but MacOS itself can take screenshots of any window and save them as PNGs to the desktop. When taking screenshots this way and using surface rendering, the contents of the window appear blank.
(However, while "surface" is the internal DOSBox default, the config file that comes with the MacOS port sets it to opengl instead which works fine. I chose openglnb just to avoid potentially-unwanted filtering.)

Finally, about the changes to default paths: setting the default mapperfile and capture paths to paths in the current user's home folder would require support for the "~/" shortcut. DOSBox doesn't yet support this in config files, so Boxer works around it by writing the user's path into the user's config file when it first creates it. This would be a useful thing to support in future versions of DOSBox I think (since it already supports using the shortcut inside a DOS session) but ideally the default internal mapperfile path should point to the user's preferences folder anyway.

it is the appropriate forum. I'm just informing you that we aren't responsible for all choices made. The .conf at the end is not a problem. I don't know if it is really the mac was of doing things though.

surface ending up in empty screenshots. I fail to see how this is a problem of dosbox. I would first try to correct the program that makes the screenshots. with overlay I could understand it. but surface should be capturable from the outside.

the ~/ support inside the configfile is a good idea. I coded it into the other functions, but I never had any need to do it in the configfile (I always use relative and local directories.), but I can see that it is indeed a nice feature to have.

Maybe try a newer/different SDL build.

I've started a new thread about the issues with the MacOS DOSBox port instead, as there were a couple more issues I wanted to bring up and I'd prefer to keep this thread specifically about the Boxer launcher application. The new thread about DOSBox itself is here: Some issues with the DOSBox MacOS port

I have updated Boxer to 0.62, which you can download at http://boxer.washboardabs.net/.

The main improvement in this version is that Boxer will now detect any disc you have in your CD drive, and any ISO images you have mounted in OS X, and automatically mount them as CD drives in Dosbox. So for instance you can pop in your System Shock CD, run DOSBox, and there it is as drive D.
I've also changed the speed up/down keboard shortcuts from the +/- keys to the arrow keys, to prevent non-US keyboard users from needing to rebind them to get them to work.

To evangelise a little: the advantage of Boxer, the goal behind every feature, is that it takes care of the hassle for you; letting you get on with playing games. It auto-configures DOSBox, sniffs games that need non-default settings, discovers any configuration file you've dropped in a game's folder, discovers CD-ROMs without needing mounting, and even translates DOSBox for you.

If you like to fiddle with every setting then this probably isn't for you. If you're like me though and would rather just click and play, I think it has a lot to offer.

Vigil - I am sure a lot of Apple Mac users will love your frontend. And I hope that the wizard-like features it has will migrate over to the other frontends.

I like the idea of sniffing existing CD's, maybe check if the majority of filenames and directories conform to the old DOS-way of 8.3, and then automatically mount it (or as least offer it) as drive D for DOSBox.

Automatically selecting the correct language file sounds like a nice idea too.

Thanks for the feedback Minimax 😀 Currently, Boxer checks the filesystem of each CD/mounted image reported by OS X: if it's ISO 9660 then Boxer mounts it as a CD at the next available drive-letter (first D, then E/F/G etc); if it's anything else then Boxer ignores it. This can mount multiple CDs and images, if present.

So it will pick up DOS CDs (and ISOs of them), but also Windows CDs and the Windows portion of dual-mode CDs. I'll have to see how time-consuming sniffing the filenames would be, or if there's any way to detect the presence of a Joliet file layer, which would indicate a CD intended for windows.

Boxer has now been updated to version 0.65! A full list of changes can be found in the Release Notes. This version now works properly in OS X 10.4 (previous versions didn't).

The main improvements in this version have been to folder and image mounting: Boxer will auto-mount any floppy or CD-ROM images it finds inside a game's folder or package. So mounting the ISO of a game CD is as easy as dropping it in the game's folder: no mount commands needed.

Boxer also allows you to give regular folders the extension .cdrom (or .harddisk or .floppy) to have Boxer detect and mount them as a drive of the appropriate type at the next appropriate drive-letter. These should also be placed in the same folder as the game.

Last but not least, this version puts joystick support back in - previous versions had accidentally omitted joystick bindings from the default keybinds.

I wish I had a Mac, so I could use Boxer. 🙁

I don't know of a Windows app that does all these nice things.

buy a mac

OK. 🤣

Boxer 0.7 has been released, and I have updated the first post in the thread with details of the new version.

I´m having some problems here. I´ve copied Boxer to my Applications folder, but when I try to start it, it crashes after some "hesitation". It did give me the chance to create the Dosbox folder in my documents folder, but then it crashed. I tried downloading the Commander Keen game from your site and starting that up, but it simply crashed as well. No error was given by the program or the OS (in effect, it just shut down).

I´ve never tried this program or dosbox before. I used version 0.7. My machine is an iBook G3 600mhz with Mac OS 10.4.11.

Actually another user with a similar machine to yours (I think he had the original "eMac") encountered the same problem. Technically it's not Boxer that's crashing in this instance, but DOSBox; Boxer launches DOSBox to play the games. You could confirm by downloading the original DOSBox 0.72 OS X port and launching it: it should do exactly the same thing, close with no error.

I suspect there's an incompatibility between DOSBox and the G3 processor, but I haven't found more info about this... I guess the earlier OS X macs are pretty rare these days so there's few people who would encounter the problem. Please try searching google for any problem reports, and possibly submitting a bug about it to the DOSBox bug tracker.

Vigil, do you use the dosbox port in your package or do you compile your own ? I know that rhoenie had some problems with compiling certain versions. Think 0.71 or 0.70 was compiled for more versions

Ah interesting... no I use the stock 0.72 package, not my own build. 0.72 seems to work fine on G4 and G5 PowerPCs, but these are the more recent models.

If you could Kinseek, would you download DOSBox 0.70 and see if it starts up ok on your mac?