NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/programmer/1617

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 3.9 KB

Path: osse.nrl.navy.mil!jung
From: [e-mail] (Greg Jung)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: V3 Includes
Date: 18 Jan 1996 23:25:24 GMT
Organization: NRL, Washington, D.C. - Code 7650
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In article <4dlu5g$[e-mail]>, Jeff Grimmett <[e-mail]> writes:
|>[e-mail] (Nils Skoruppa) wrote:
|>
|>>I am really astonished that it should take months just to put
|>>an excerpt from the Autodocs concerning the new functions
|>>of 3.0 and 3.1 on Aminet or wherever. Doing this would enable at least all
|>>those who wrote free/share/whatever-ware for the Amiga in
|>>pre-AT days to upgrade and continue their contributions
|>>to keep the Amiga living.

    The reason for a delay has been explained to be a legal difficulty,
  I believe, that the copyright for the existing docs is in others'
   hands.
|>
|>Questions for you to answer:
  [clip]
|>4.  How does not having the 3.x autodocs keep one from writing OS-
|>    compliant shareware for the Amiga?
   The problem is, some people are writing os3 software with eg
   datatype.library and what have you, from autodocs and other
   developer material & previous educations.  So pop for the $40
   or whatever for an NDK from Hirsch & Wolff.
|>
|>>Instead one hears "wait and wait and wait ..." --- without any explanation.
|>>At least they (AT supp.) could give some reasonable excuse
|>>why they do not publish the few new Autodocs parts --- it is
|>>definitly not due to lack of time!!! (the uploading itself
|>>would not cost more than a few minutes!!!)
|>

|>Do yourself a favor.  Create a mere LIBRARY containing 20 functions, and
|>clearly document them, and pass it and the docs to a total stranger, and
|>see if that total stranger can actually use your docs and library.  This
|>will give you a few insights into the process that ATG has to follow.
|>And ADos 3.x contains MANY more changes than that.  I would estimate that
|>it's several hundred, if not a couple of thousand, changes.

   I can't put my finger on what, but something make the V40
  include set 3X the size of the V37.  Is that substance or fluff?
|>
|>>Those who kept loyal in the hard Amiga days really deserve a better
|>>treatment. If they continue their policy like this, then they will probably
|>>loose a lot of Amigians of the old days. But probably they do not
|>>care since they aim at a new market anyway ?
     Its my perception that on all platforms there is a hoarding
   of the API documentation, generally, requiring one to buy another
   publication to get the info; on the amiga side, this seems less
   the case.  Join the developers club or forget it, at price set by
   the OS company (MS/IBM/Apple).  Or develop one version behind,
   which is good enough for most applications.

   These _are_ the hard days. One after another come around griping
  about this or that, "why doesn't AT monitor my rantings and answer?"
|>
|>I agree that they need to get on the stick IRT developers. I disagree
|>with your feelings that doing it halfway is what is needed.  We need the
|>autodocs, we need the includes, and we need RKMs.  We need all three
|>before I will be moving on to 3.x development.
|>
   In the meantime the RKMs for V37 do quite a bit, an abridged
  few-chapters worth should suffice to introduce the V40-specific
  stuff.
|>I also disagree with your perception that doing AmigaDOS 3.x includes and
|>autodocs are a trivial thing.  It's not.
|>
|>And I also disagree with the idea that it's easy to find someone to DO
|>this job for them.  If Skippy the Squirrel writes the final RKMs, we're
|>in BIG trouble.
|>
|>
|>

Greg