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Content-type: text/plain
On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, CFB Software wrote:
I reordered your paragraphs and edited your message a tiny bit because
of reordering:
> Any attempts to make complete environments portable suffer from two
> problems - either
>
> a) the lowest common denominator approach has to be used, resulting in a
> system that is less than useless
> The above is successful where the user wants to run the system on
> non-compatible hardware. e.g. I can run ETH Oberon without having to buy
> a Ceres system, a Macintosh user can run Windows in Virtual PC without
> buying Windows hardware.
"Less than useless" is too strong. I have done lots of work in Windows 2k
ran in VMWare under Linux and it was very useful. The alternative would be
either dual boot machine or two machines on the same desk, both of which
were too unwieldy. So there is merit in running one OS under emulator in
another OS. I guess every computer scientist would shiver, but these ugly
solutions do work in practice.
> b) the resulting system is so foreign to the users of all of the host
> environments that it is not accepted
This has been conclusively proven with ETH Oberon that has solved
virtually all portability problems, but yet has been rejected.
It is a sad story. I still remember being able to develop under Windows
and run under Linux and Solaris, or vice-versa. All my programs and data
files were portable. Yet, ETH Oberon wilted and portability is as big
a problem as it used to be. Every computer scientist should lament,
but this was the final lesson. Ugly.
> I consider that BlackBox in its current form will still be useful for at
> least five years even if no further development was to happen. Win32
> still has a lot of momentum. Making BB Open Source minimises the fear of
> loss of future support and also gives an opportunity for enthusiastic
> individuals to add small-scale, but very useful, new capabilities e.g.
> the tabbed document interface in the IDE that I enquired about recently.
Actually, there is lots of BB development, but otside the mother company.
I hope Oms has recognized the enormity of effort put into BB applications
by the community. The minimal Oms role should be to preserve that effort
by making BB a viable platform to be had on future revisions of Windows,
such that the application base can be used. I dare not say what could be
a "maximal Oms role", but the minimal role seems clear.
W.
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Received on Fri Oct 22 2004 - 15:05:57 UTC