Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Path: utzoo!utdoe!david
From: david@doe.utoronto.ca (David Megginson)
Subject: New standards for MiNT programs?
Message-ID: <1991Mar18.140901.1919@doe.utoronto.ca>
Sender: david@doe.utoronto.ca (David Megginson)
Organization: Dictionary of Old English Project - U of Toronto
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1991 14:09:01 GMT


It's time for us to start designing programs and libraries which will
run under future versions of MiNT which support bigger and better
file systems. A good idea might be to include some dummy system calls
which MiNT-aware programs can use to replace Fsfirst(), Fsnext() etc.
The new system calls should work the same for now, but require a much
larger buffer for the program name. That way, in the future when MiNT
supports better file systems, MiNT programs will not have to be recompiled
to be able to support names like Nethack.Source.tar.Z. If we just put
all of the calls in place now, our work will be easier in a year or two.

Comments? Perhaps we should write a spec sheet for what programs/libraries
should do to be upwards compatible with future MiNT versions. This is
something that we can do together on the net, and all Eric would have
to do is approve it and include it in the distribution.


-- 
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/  David Megginson                      david@doe.utoronto.ca          /
/  Centre for Medieval Studies          meggin@vm.epas.utoronto.ca     /
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