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From: tdn@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Newton)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: net.sources.amiga - it's time!
Message-ID: <483@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 20-Nov-85 14:22:54 EST
Article-I.D.: spice.483
Posted: Wed Nov 20 14:22:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 05:21:25 EST
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 25

> My two cents' worth: net.sources.mac should only have ASCII sources
> Others' worth: Mac users without appropriate compilers can't compile them
>
> Nobody has mentioned that BINHEX postings don't need "expensive" (for
> individual micro owners) compilers.

The reason that it is useful to post binaries for the Mac (preferably, in
addition to sources) is that there are many development environments, but
there's no official dev. system for anything but 68000 assembly code.  It
is not reasonable to expect Mac owners to have *all* of the packages that
are on the market -- this would run into thousands of dollars per Mac!

> . . .
> I've been keeping quiet on this, but now Amiga threatens to begin binaries.
> We have to act now or we'll have also have Altair binaries.

Fortunately, the Amiga does have a standard development environment, at least
for C programming.  It probably would not be unreasonable to expect people to
buy the standard C compiler, much as net.sources readers are expected to have
access to "cc".  Thus, C programs could be posted source-only with no loss of
utility.  (This doesn't address the issue of what to do with shareware, which
isn't generally made available in source form, but that's a different topic.)

                                        -- Thomas.Newton
                                           Thomas.Newton@spice.cs.cmu.edu