Portability

[jacob navia]

Re: Portability

Flash Gordon wrote:

You asked for a single one that doesn't, so here is one for you. BeOS. I
suspect there are others, but this is the one that came to mind.
>

Dead. Dead ones do not count please.

--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32

[Flash Gordon]

Re: Portability

jacob navia wrote, On 07/04/08 21:57:

Flash Gordon wrote:

>You asked for a single one that doesn't, so here is one for you. BeOS.
>I suspect there are others, but this is the one that came to mind.

>
Dead. Dead ones do not count please.

I'm sure you can still install it on current HW and you did not specify
current in any case.

However, there is the Cocoa API on the Apple MAC (specifically in MacOS
X) which is Objective-C if you want something more current. This is
rather more than just GUI which is what you were asking about. The X
server on recent MacOS X releases is an addition which has been bolted on.
--
Flash Gordon

[santosh]

Re: Portability

Walter Roberson wrote:

In article <65ucacF2g9tk5U 11@mid.individu al.net>,
Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.co mwrote:

>>jacob navia wrote:

>

>>The fact that ALL windows systems
>>feature a C interface is answered with "maybe". Can you name a
>>single one that doesn't?

>

>>No, but I bet someone else can.

>
It is my -impression- (possibly incorrect) that the cell phone market
is heavily programmed in Java; I had gathered that C is not supported
on a lot of those systems. But I do not work in that field, so it
could be that C is merely not offered as a "public" interface and
that the Java itself is implemented in C? Could someone who works
with cell phones clarify/correct this issue?

I gather that cell phone application software if implemented in Java for
the same reasons that many desktop applications are done so: you can
distribute the software over a network and clients need not posses a
compiler or compatible hardware to run them. The system software (like
the OS and the Java VM) are most often done in C with bits of
assembler.

[John Bode]

Re: Portability

On Apr 6, 2:14 pm, jacob navia <ja...@nospam.c omwrote:

One of the holy cows here is this "portabilit y" stuff.

snerk

>
In practice, portability means:
>
1) Use the least common denominator of all the supported
systems.

Real-world example: I worked on a system that had to run on Windows
3.1, Solaris, and Classic MacOS concurrently. I had this wonderful
idea to use enums to store a series of bit masks. Unfortunately,
these bitmasks were 32-bit, and while MPW supported 32-bit enums, MSVC
did not. So much for my great idea.

LCD is the minimum that the Standard mandates (in this particular
case, the minimum is 16-bit enums).

2) Between usability / good user experience and portability
always choose portability since this minimizes programming
effort
>

It *is* possible to deliver both usability *and* portability; I've
done it. That same project used a third-party library for GUI
development that mimicked the native look and feel for each platform.
People sitting on Windows thought they were using a regular Windows
app, people sitting in front of a Mac thought they were using a
regular Mac app (if you were willing to ignore a couple of minor
glitches), and people sitting on Solaris thought they were using a
regular OpenLook app. All used the same code base.

Absent such tools, it's possible to factor out the platform-specific
sections, and keep the core application code platform-agnostic.
Portability is *not* a binary condition; it's a matter of degree.

This leads to mediocre software that runs anywhere but that nobody uses
because it is just that: MEDIOCRE.
>

I will gladly put up anything I wrote in the '90s as an example of
code that was *not* mediocre.

GUIS?
>
Non portable
>

And often not relevant. The bulk of the code I've written in my
career had no GUI.

Network?
>
Non portable.
>

Ditto.

This obsession with portability as the *only* way to measure software
has been carried out into this group

*Nobody* in this group has claimed portability is the *only* way to
measure software; however, for many of us who've been doing this for a
living, it is a major concern. In almost 20 years, I've worked on 1,
count 'em, *1* system that did not have to support multiple platforms
concurrently. And I'm not talking about embedded systems, or exotic
platforms; I'm talking Windows, MacOS, *nix.

>
My priorities are different
>
1) Correct software, few bugs
2) Good user interface, good performance.
3) Small software, avoiding bloat
4) Portability
>

We *all* strive for correctness, performance, etc.