The goal of the Lavender project is to create a simple configurable slideshow program for MS-DOS and Windows, written mainly in C.

This project has been publicly deployed twice, as a part of the promotional package for the 7th and 8th edition of the Twilightmeet cultural event.

The application shows slides consisting of text and graphics contained in the ZIP file appended to the executable.

GitHub repository

Application features (version 0.4.10)

• MS-DOS 2.0, Windows 2000, and diagnostic Linux targets
• text-based script file format
• graphics mode: CGA 640x200 monochrome under DOS, 24-bit RGB under Windows and Linux
• display delays (animations): millisecond resolution
• displaying text (with UTF-8 subset support): under DOS, supports Czech, Polish, and Spanish diacritics, and 0x00-0x1F, 0x7F CP437 special characters
• displaying bitmap images: monochrome binary Portable BitMap (P4) files, XRGB8888 Windows Device Independent Bitmaps (BMP) under Windows and Linux
• drawing and filling rectangles: 16 colors on Windows and Linux, mapped 5 monochrome patterns on DOS
• MIDI Type 0 and own mono format music playback: PC Speaker, Yamaha OPL2, Roland MPU-401 UART under DOS, Windows MME API, FluidSynth under Linux
• script nesting: plain text, or encrypted using XOR or DES
• navigation using key presses and mouse clicks
• multiple language support (Czech, English, Polish)

Features planned for the next release

• compilation-time feature selection based on Kconfig
• high resolution graphics
• full screen mode
• separated archive support
• decryption key retrieval using an external service
• mouse support in user dialogs
• 3DES cipher support
• polyphonic MIDI emulation on PC speaker
• loadable display and sound drivers under DOS: EGA 16-color 640x350
• DOS extended memory support
• native Windows target for x86, x64, Arm, Arm64, and Itanium
• native macOS target