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Re: Let's get System 7.x on top!



>>>>> "Craig" == Craig Olinsky <crolinsky@vassar.edu> writes:
In article <v01540b00ad92b4fa2509@[143.229.144.59]> crolinsky@vassar.edu (Craig Olinsky) writes:


    >> I'm disappointed in the idea that E3 will still not allow the
    >> true MacOS to be placed on top of it.  If ARDI is planning a
    >> Win95 specific version, that could be AFTER the MacOS can be
    >> placed on top...it just seems that the DOS version is fine for
    >> Win95 and more folks might like to use System 7.5 before the
    >> Win95 version...
    >> 
    >> Mike

    Craig> Actually, in some ways the a Windows 32-bit port would
    Craig> facilitate ARDI devoting more time to work on System 7.xx
    Craig> support in that the use of Windows APIs for hardware
    Craig> independence would reduce their time spent on issues of:
    Craig> system configuration, graphics card drivers/support (well,
    Craig> they are already using univbe, but...), sound card, SCSI
    Craig> drive/CD-ROM support, etc. that they have with E/D. There
    Craig> also is an opportunity for speed gains using WinG/DirectX,
    Craig> better use of memory, etc.

Craig has hit the nail on the head.  We spend ridiculously large
amounts of time now messing around with DOS intracacies that we can
avoid when we have a more advanced OS backing us up.  In all liklihood
we won't add support for things like networking to the DOS specific
version and that will save us time because we'll be able to add
support for networking to the other versions *much* quicker.

    Craig> Also, consider that a Windows 95 port is also a Windows NT
    Craig> port.  E/D has not been able to run on NT until the latest
    Craig> bleeding edges, due to such things as NT's exclusionof DOS
    Craig> sound drivers, etc., due to various protection issues (i
    Craig> s'pose), etc.

Right and even now under NT there are many problems.

    Craig> Unrelated Comments (well, related to Executor, but...)
    Craig> -------------------------------------------------------

    Craig> 1. Nice splash screen.

Thanks.  We have a few changes that will be made before it ships.

    Craig> 2. I noticed in the credits, the mention of a Japanese
    Craig> translation/(version?)  of Executor....what is the status
    Craig> of this?  What does it involve?  Is it merely translation
    Craig> of documentation?  dialogs and menu boxes?  or is it
    Craig> planned to allow actual execution of kanjitalk applications
    Craig> & DBCS character entry (of course, this would involve
    Craig> worldscript extensions, which i assume are not one of the
    Craig> highest priorities at the moment).

Currently it's only translation of various docs.  We do hope to
support WorldScript but that will only be done if either we have a
sufficiently large revenue stream that we can take on that project
without having to scale back our "system 7.x on Executor" project or
if we can get funding for that project from a source other than our
revenue stream.  I think the latter is likely once E2 is more widely
known.

    Craig> (At this point I am just VERY impressed with ARDI's work on
    Craig> exeuctor, but have only played with the demo because I have
    Craig> a mac and therefore no direct need for it.  A version with
    Craig> Japanese language support (or even, eventually, the ability
    Craig> to drop in worldscript) would be, in my mind much
    Craig> preferable (and cheaper!) than purchasing Apples Japanese
    Craig> Language Kit or KanjiTalk/Japanese 7.x)

    Craig> 3. I'm probably completely off here (and not that too many
    Craig> people are running it), but would there be any benefit to
    Craig> setting up powermac-compatibility by producing a version of
    Craig> Executor on this RISC-Based Windows NT?

You mean develop a version of Executor for a PPC based Mac running
Windows NT and let the native PPC processor execute the PPC code?
We'll probably do that although that probably won't be our primary PPC
development environment.  I haven't seen it yet, but I would guess
that we'll do our development under Linux/PPC.  In addition to using a
native PPC processor to run PPC code we plan to emulate the PPC as
well.

    Craig> 4. Has anyone tried to run SoftWindows under Executor?  It
    Craig> would be interesting to compare the speed of Windows apps
    Craig> under SoftWin under Executor to those on a real mac...PLUS
    Craig> if it ran at a reasonable speed it would be an additional
    Craig> option for running Dos/Windows applications under Linux.
    Craig> (Rather funny too: A unix-"clone" running a mac-"clone"
    Craig> running a windows "clone".)

I know people have gotten SoftPC, SoftWindow's precursor to run.  I
don't know about SoftWindows.  I'm sure it would be too slow to be of
much use to the Linux community -- they already have dosemu and WINE.

    Craig> Pardon my grammar.  This is my break from an all-night
    Craig> thesis writing session.

No problem.  I tend to skimp when posting news anyway.  Writing well
takes too much time.

    Craig> Craig Olinsky crolinsky@vaxsar.vassar.edu

    Craig> --still waiting for a macintosh port of executor *grin*

--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com


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