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From: ron@mlfarm.UUCP (Ronald Florence)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: RE: Draw Poker Game
Message-ID: <9012170616.AA09251@mlfarm.com>
Date: 17 Dec 90 11:16:37 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 33

I'd like to add a strong second to Richard Goerwitz's comments on code
portability.  One of the most welcome features of Icon is the
implementation independence of the code.  With few exceptions, Icon
code works on a broad range of machines.  How depressing, then, to
discover valuable utilites and clever games which require hours of
porting with an editor because of hard-coded screen-control escape
sequences.  Richard Goerwitz's Icon termcap library, which includes
ms-dos entries, is one solution.  For those who don't want to use the
termcap code, screen control sequences can be isolated in global
strings or functions, so that porting doesn't require line-by-line
changes of an entire program.

While I'm griping, I'd urge that program instructions omit
implementation-dependent exceptions:

 > # DRAW.ICN          12/15/90          BY TENAGLIA       #
 > #                                                       #
 > # SIMPLE BUT FUN DRAW POKER GAME. WORKS ON ANSI SCREEN. #
 > # USAGE : ICONX DRAW [starting credits]                 #

If I'm not wrong, the need for `iconx' before the program name is
confined to ms-dos and VMS.  Users of those systems surely know how to
run Icon programs on their systems.

My comments are not in any way intended as a flame of Chris Tenaglia's
excellent game, which would probably work unchanged on some of the
terminals here.  With a few changes that would be easy when the code
is written, though time-consuming later, the game would work right off
the icon-group mailing list on any terminal and operating system
running Icon.  
--

Ronald Florence			ron@mlfarm.com