On 05.09.2012, at 18:25, "MacArthur, Ian (SELEX GALILEO, UK)" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Ah, I see what you mean. The beauty of NewtonOS is, that there is almost >> no app out there that uses native code. All existing apps are compiled >> into NewtonOS byte code which can we already compile and run. So it is >> actually a bit less work because in the end we need "only" the modern API. > > Oh, right, I see (maybe...) > > So what is needed is: > > 1) An interpreter for the NewtonOS byte code > > 2) A mechanism to "run" the Newton ROM and execute the bytecode > > > And (1) you already have, and (2) is done by "running" a real Newton ROM in > an emulation of the Newton h/w environment - this works, but is slower than > we'd like. > > So the plan is to replace (2) with a native re-implementation of the Newton > ROM, based on the known API, and then it will all run much faster and be (I > assume) free of Apple IP? > > Is that about right? The ROM has about 3MB of ARM machine code generated from C++ (10% hand coded in assembler). That part is emulated and about the factor 20-100 slower than the original. This is the part I want to recreate in C++. Another 3MB is written in NewtonOS, compiled into Byte Code. These need only be recreated if want to run without a licensed ROM, but make no difference in speed. The remaining 2MB are graphics, sounds, and word libraries, which again are (C) Apple and need to be recreated to be copyright free, or injected using an existing ROM. Running the byte code is one thing, but having the total Newton experience includes hand writing recognition, a smart database, and a complete UI library. UI library? Yes indeed. And here we are back on the subject. Yes, I considered writing an interface for the compiler to FLTK for a while. This would work pretty well, made easy by the wrapper layer of FLTK3, but it would not be NewtonOS. There are some great ideas in NewtonOS. If FLTK ever supports pen base devices, it could get a lot of inspiration from it. For touch devices, not so much. - Matthias _______________________________________________ fltk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.easysw.com/mailman/listinfo/fltk
