Jochen Merz wrote
> The idea was that the people involved would meet at Eindhoven > next weekend and discuss matters, to see what can be done. > I guess as you, Wolfgang, got everything going, we will meet > you there too, won't we? ;-) Not sure. I'm having a dinner planned for that evening. I'll see what I can do... I did ask Tony whether I could release that info, he said yes. > That's why it took me by surprise. A life without surprises is....dull. > The future status of SMSQ/E can be discussed there and a > sensible decision can be made. And if SMSQ/E will become > open source, we do have to find a reliable registrar, that's > right. We can also discuss it here! > The status of QPC, for example, won't change at all. Why not? > And - it is SMSQ/E which could become open source, NOT > drivers developed by others. So, Marcel, if you would like > to help the QLers by producing an Aurora colour driver, go > ahead and do so and it can be marketed. There is no reason > why things need to/have to be for free. Personally, I think the important thing is that we have a coherent OS for ALL of the machines it runs on.! I wouldn't like a situation where QPC, or Q60, or Aurora or whatever has OS features that the others don't have. For me, the strength of the OS is that it is the SAME (hardware permitting) on all machines. If that is no longer the truth, I'll probably loose interest. (...) > > I would say that, in general, it is good to see the possibility > of things improving somehow, although I doubt they will (and so > does Tony) just because SMSQ/E may become open source. There is no doubt that an enormous amount of learning will be needed at first. (... ) > The colour drivers exist for several years now - which application > benefits from it? You see! Umm I beg to differ here. The colour drivers do exist, but they can't be used from within the PE. Most people I know write for the PE, so... In some circumstances, the additional colours do exist and are used. For example, I have an in-house database concerning my DVDs. I have recently changed that, so that it now shows the jackets. These have been scanned (under windows) and the software shows the original PC 256 colour bitmaps in part of the QL window. So, colours are getting used... > I really hope that things get going faster again, and my > feeling is that the modification which Marcel will do to > the Window Manager as described some days ago may help getting > more improvements than whether having an open source SMSQ/E or > not. It's the drivers and applications, which are much more > important!! Yes, but how much of the screen drivers (for example) is peculiar to each machine, and how much isn't? If one re-wrote the screen P.E screen driver traps and vectors, wouldn't all machines profit from this? And how would yu do that without the sources? > But let's meet at Eindhoven next weekend and see what kind of > reasonable solution can be found for SMSQ. The emphasis being on "reasonable", I hope! Wolfgang
