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From: mike@smu
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Portability of Mac Source
Message-ID: <20800048@smu>
Date: Wed, 4-Dec-85 14:22:00 EST
Article-I.D.: smu.20800048
Posted: Wed Dec  4 14:22:00 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Dec-85 07:10:52 EST
References: <471@graffiti.UUCP>
Lines: 27
Nf-ID: #R:graffiti.UUCP:471:smu:20800048:000:1496
Nf-From: smu!mike    Dec  4 13:22:00 1985


I strongly disagree that Mac-like programs can easily be made
portable.  It seems to me that only someone who has never really tried
to do that could make such a claim.  The are MAJOR differences between
GEM and the Macintosh ROM.  Ever tried to use windows under GEM?
Scrollbars are great fun, let me tell you.  In fact, have you ever
tried to deal with event processing under GEM?  MUCH MUCH different
than the Macintosh.  These differences aren't things like changing
ints to longs.

Claiming that all one must do is sacrifice a little bit of efficiency
(supposedly gained by exploiting some system-specific feature) in
order to create programs that move easily between "similar"
environments is silly.  UNIX and VMS are similar; both are multi-user,
multi-tasking minicomputer operating systems.  Think of the
difficulties involved in porting a heavily UNIX-oriented software
system to as different an environment as VMS.  It is unlikely that
anyone would try and make the software use features found only in the
intersection of the two OS's.   A more likely solution would be to use
something like EUNICE (I think that's what it's called) to provide a
UNIX environment within VMS (or vice-versa).  Unfortunately, nobody
has created MacGEM (and I doubt anybody will).


Mike McNally            SMU     -----------------------------------------
mike@smu                        "Is there Christmas in the hippie world?"
...{convex|texsun}!smu!mike     -----------------------------------------