It's paused / suspended since Xeno86 is busy with diploma and i'm busy back with RP. Please report critical issues (ex.: broken MSYS) to be fixed in stable release.
There are some news about subpixel font rendering if someone is interested. Pardon me if it's not the right place to share. 1) ClearType rasterizer from Microsoft Reader (which i use in RP9) is widely tweakable with registry settings and in fact gives results extremely close to Windows 7 output. 2) There is a full functioning ClearType rasterizer in gdiplus.dll which is artifically restricted by GetVersionEx check. It gives output extremely close to Windows XP output and has decent performance, but GDI+ text api is awkward. And by extremely close i mean pixel perfect match with indistinguishable color or possible minor hinting differences.
Here are some parameters to greatly tweak ClearType rasterizer: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\ctras.dll\parameters] "Decimation"=dword:00000001 <- Decimation: advanced processing. Gives less color fringe. Disabled (0) by default. "Gamma"=dword:00000064 <- Text gamma. 100 (0x64) by default. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\ctras.dll\flags] "CompatibleWidth"=dword:00000001 - Force glyph into default metrics. If enabled (1), uses standard (non-aliased) metrics. Very useful for small fonts. Disabled (0) by default. "NonCTDIRAA"=dword:00000001 - Additional anti-aliasing. Works only with Decimation enabled. Don't enable without Decimation. Disabled (0) by default. "CTDIRSPP"=dword:00000000 - Sub-pixel positioning. Disabled (0) by default. I like those i specified. Note that changes apply only for newly-started programs.
Well not really. I just shifted focus to other things (KernelEx for example). There is no point releasing new betas unless this thing is stable; finishing this thing requires dedicating extreme effort which is not feasible for me. I'm sorry for that, but I never claimed this thing as usable. I don't see critical problems with RP9 so your point is invalid.
There is a scenario in which Miranda IM would damage RP9/system skin objects. RP9 has protection against that, however KernelEx 4.5 can break it. Next version should have that fixed, but i'm not sure about Miranda being so stinky.
It sounds like kexCOM failed to unregister on uninstall which is surprising.Check [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{00021401-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\InProcServer32] value (after removing 4.5). should be "shell32.dll". Also please tell if you used any uninstallers / Safe Mode.
You can replace libgio2...dll with older one (from older Gimp). Doesn't have anything to do with SuspendThread or KernelEx. Doesn't seem to work on Windows XP. Are you sure it worked? And what's wrong with QT? KernelEx should be able to digest that. I'll test it later. You need to have ..\etc folder. I.e. if you're launching files from c:\mingw\bin, you need to have c:\mingw\etc. Also make sure there is no msys-1.0.dll in \windows\system.
I'm talking KernelEx 4 beta 2 which is about to be released. If you have problems with Thunderbird 2 / Firefox 2 not opening links, disable kernelex for them with compatibility tab. Don't blame community; i just recently confirmed the problem (and the problem rise last year with some security update).
I've researched this issue and - that may sound stupid - it's really mimicking XP behavior. SHParseDisplayName check they added in some security update actually may fail to process mailto: links. Nevertheless it's a serious issue and it will be fixed soon. And if you want printing, what you wanna print?
I'm not sure how ntkern really works. But 98 kernel has (K32_)NtCreateFile which calls ntkern one and takes unicode strings. So no, your idea is not working. You have to call ifsmgr directly somehow.
Yet to be tested. I'm afraid it's not that easy. Only those which "win32 services" are registered for. Not much for ntkern. 9x already has hideous support for NT device namespace. For example, you can do CreateFileA \\?\C:\file.txt and you'll receive handle for file opened with NT minikernel. This handle is limited to only certain apis so reimplementing whole certain apis and kernel driver will be required.
Set Enabled=0 in [Crash Reporter] section in application.ini located in firefox folder. Then post crash message here. (use wordpad or some other pad to open that ini file)
Photoshop crashing. Not sure about FF3 shell integration, you may ask someone else. KernelEx 4.0 Final 2 doesn't have photoshop crashing bug so you may try it meanwhile.
drwatson.exe is built in windows. Autoruns can be downloaded from microsoft, but you need older version or kex installed. All you need is click File->Save (txt file) and attach it here.