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From: dmt@pegasus.ATT.COM (Dave Tutelman)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: International Stevie, and PD software
Message-ID: <4565@pegasus.ATT.COM>
Date: 25 Mar 90 15:25:22 GMT
References: <337@isgtec.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmt@pegasus.ATT.COM (Dave Tutelman)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs - Lincroft, NJ
Lines: 71

Two orders of business here:
   1.	Why Stevie masks the eighth bit, and what's happened since.
   2.	Robert Osborne's comments on PD software.

1. STEVIE AND THE EIGHTH BIT
I'm the person who "did" Stevie 3.69a (made the enhancements, and posted
the source).  I responded the the person who started the thread about
"Why does Stevie mask the eighth bit?" by Email, we exchanged a few
polite notes, and his problem seems to be solved.  The gist of our
discussion was:
   -	Stevie masks the eighth bit because it was programmed years ago
	by an American programmer, before internationalization of
	software was an issue.  Hey, folks, this is version 3.69a,
	and it was originally written for the Atari ST as a private
	hack.
   -	Stevie 3.69a masks the eighth bit because (a) I never noticed
	that it masked it (didn't open that particular code), and
	(b) being an American, none of my uses of it turned up that
	deficiency.  (I agree it is a deficiency.)
   -	The person who complained has the source.  He took the very
	reasonable path of making some simple modifications to
	unmask the eighth bit.  Last I heard, he had something that
	worked for him.

Which brings us to....

2. WHAT TO DO WITH PD SOFTWARE
In article <337@isgtec.UUCP> robert@isgtec.UUCP (Robert Osborne) writes:
>
>Why don't you two guys stop your bitching, pool your money, and ship
>some 8 bit systems to the guys who wrote/maintain STEVIE.  Why do you
>expect somebody who is doing YOU a favour by suppling a PD vi to
>go out of their way to support YOUR language;  one they probably
>don't even speak!  Better yet, shut up,  make the necessary changes
>for 8-bit support and send the diffs to the maintainer!

Very nearly a good point, Robert.  I wish it hadn't been made so shrilly.

First the good news.  You have the source.  The program is TRULY PD.
Make the changes so it does what you want.  Share it with the rest of
us.  (Hey, that's how 3.69a came into being.)

Now the bad news.  I don't know that you can "send it to the guys who
wrote/maintain Stevie", and expect something reasonable to happen.
   -	Tim Thompson (the original author) is long since out of the loop.
   -	Tony Andrews (the author of 3.69) is pretty busy these days.
	(Either that, or he's moved, since he hasn't responded lately
	to my communications.)
   -	True to the philosophy above, I've got Stevie where I want it,
	and don't consider myself the "maintainer" of it.

There are a number of people who have wrote me that they're making
enhancements to 3.69a.  Such things as a VMS port, international (8-bit)
version, "restricted shell" version for BBS, keyboard macros, etc. 
It would be nice if there were someone to coordinate all this into
the next Stevie package in another 6 months or so. 
Does someone want to volunteer?  (No, don't volunteer me.  See above.) 
Probably the person with the largest enhancements should integrate the
others into his/her version, and post it.  (...the way I integrated
Larry Shurr's BIOS and color features with my 3.69a stuff.)

You see, having software that is truly PD is a mixed blessing.  If
nobody owns it, then NOBODY OWNS IT!

Dave
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|    Dave Tutelman						|
|    Physical - AT&T Bell Labs  -  Lincroft, NJ			|
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