Talking of ports of QPC, I have been interested for a long time as to whether the best QL emulator could be ported to Mac OS X (_only_ Intel arch).
Actually, I wouldn't mind having a bash at this myself - particularly if the Windows coupling is relatively straightforward (so one doesn't have to rearchitect the most of the code). Naturally, most/all of Marcel's comments regarding portability (or lack thereof), and therefore the economics of the exercise, apply to OS X as much as they do to Linux. Nevertheless, it would be VERY nice to be able to run SMSQ/E in a native window without having to start Parallels virtualisation with a copy of Windows XP first - as much as this works just fine. -- Lwe On 3-Jan-08, at 1:58 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Message: 1 > Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 18:40:05 +0100 > From: Marcel Kilgus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] Windows, Linux and QPC > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Norman Dunbar wrote: >> and I can almost hear Marcel groaning right now, I'm wondering what >> the possibility of getting a Linux version of QPC is? >> >> Do I hear the work 'slim' or even 'no chance at all' out there? > > Actually I prefer "not a frigging chance" ;-) Not from me, anyway. > >> I use QT4 for C++ development on Linux, occasionally, and if the >> 'engine' of QPC is simply (Sorry Marcel, I know it isn't simple) >> something that could be converted to a library, or a module that is >> called, I suspect I could possible manage to build a sort of working >> version of QPC for Linux - a little naive there perhaps, but I know >> almost nothing of how QPC actually works. > > Well, step 1 would be to get the whole assembler stuff compiling under > linux, which given that linux uses a completely different syntax for > everything assembler (AT&T style versus Intel style) would be quite a > feat in itself. Not to say practically impossible. > > It might be more sensible to continue using a Windows assembler and > hoping that the Linux linker can cope with the resulting object > format. Not sure how well that would work out. > > Portability wasn't really high up in the list (or even ON the list at > all) of criteria for QPC's code and it shows. Due to historical > reasons many parts are still mostly assembler, though over the years > some parts migrated a bit to the C side of things. Most are a mix of > both. All in all many things would probably have to be rewritten from > scratch. If I rewrote QPC today it would be much different, but many > of the design decisions were done when I was 15 or so, for much less > powerful machines. > >> Now, whether the above is feasible, possible or even desired, I >> have no >> idea. > > If you want to give it a try, that could probably be arranged. It > would certainly be fun to have a Linux version, at least if I have > nothing to do with it whatsoever. But quite frankly I think life is > too short to even try. > >> I have tried to run QPC under wine on Linux but with little success. >> When I type in a command at the #0 prompt, I get an instant repeat >> of the first character or the command, and random ones after that. >> So 'dir ram1_' would turn out to be >> 'ddddddddddddddddddddddddddirrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrram1_' or similar. >> Not very much use to me! > > Yes, wine is still a bit overwhelmed with QPC. You might have a bit > more luck with Cedega. > > But I guess that best performance is achieved by running Windows in a > virtual machine like VMWare. > > Marcel _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
