> On Mon, 23 Oct 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > >Because one port isn't being kept up with the others... > > Exactly. Source code is useful for this, too, BTW. Also, there's no need > to keep the development for each platform seperate: Mozilla is a full > blown web browser that compiles for Windows, OS/2, MacOS, OpenVMS, Linux, > Solaris, and several other UNIX systems, and we can't even keep a Sam > emulator in one piece? > > Why is this? The main portability problems are, AFAICS, toolkits, graphics, > sound and input libraries. Here, we're just dealing with a keyboard, a > mouse, and a bitmap screen. It can't be *that* hard...
It's because: 1. The design of the original project is too complicated, and too oriented to Unix. 2. There is no documentation "how to make ports", so porting is usually done with some rewritting of original code. 3. There is no response of the author. If somebody says: "Hey I need this and that to be changed to make porting to Mac possible", Allan Skillman sits and does nothing. 4. It is NOT object oriented, so even quite small project is hard to understand and keep alive, especially when there is no documentation. Although some programmers have good experience with C programming, I must radically call for C++. Objects!!! Objects!!! Objects!!! Or better said Classes!!! Classes!!! Classes!!! 5. People working on ports don't cooperate with each other, or even worse, anybody other. If we have e.g. no sources or information on Mac & Win32 versions, we can hardly do anything. (I would like to help with Win32 version, since my work on DOS version is over, and I have no work now.) btw. The DOS version is something very strange, the video/keyboard/mouse routines are made very silly, and let alone just because "It does work, so what?" When I followed the production of DOS version, I very carefully marked all I changed and/or add, wrote the documentation on my work, and give the sources & binaries to the public. Can I do anything more? Unfortunately nobody else did like me. And, unfortunately even we all did our best, this can't guarantee the good result, since the above 4 points are still there. That's my opinion. Aley p.s. The good stuff is Dave Hooper's SAA library. Portable, source and documentation included. Unfortunately, nobody incorporated it into *portable* SimCoupe.
