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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!osu-eddie!elwell
From: elwell@osu-eddie.UUCP (Clayton M. Elwell)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac,net.micro.amiga
Subject: Portable Workstation Library
Message-ID: <955@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Dec-85 11:40:34 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.955
Posted: Mon Dec  9 11:40:34 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Dec-85 06:23:37 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Ohio State Univ., CIS Dept., Cols, Oh.
Lines: 48
Xref: watmath net.micro.mac:3740 net.micro.amiga:1034

First, to those on net.micro.amiga:  several days ago I posted a mild
flame about portability to net.micro.mac.  This is a response to some
of the replies I received via news and mail.

Okay, folks.  Enough is enough.  Tonight I will start writing a portable
application library for workstation-style computers.  It will be designed
to be used with C.  It will be distributed in net.sources as C source code
with #ifdefs for the various compilers.  To start with, it will support the
following machines and compilers (because they're the ones I have access to):

	IBM PC running GEM / Lattice C
	Commodore Amiga / Lattice C
	Apple Macintosh / Megamax C
	Apple Macintosh / Sumex C
	SUN Engineering Workstation / Suntools

The library will consist of support for the following capabilities:

	Multiple windows
	Menus
	Rasterop and vector operations in arbitrary windows
	keyboard & mouse handling
	UNIX-style file I/O (only if necessary; most C compilers
		provide this)
	Alerts & Dialogs

This should be enough for most applications.  If anyone has ideas for how
to do other things (like resources) let me know.

Not only will it allow the same programs to run opn various machines, each
in its particular style, it will be designed specifically so that it can be
extended to other machines (like the Atari ST, the Apollo Domain workstations,
etc.).  It will be distributed in the public domain.  People can use it to
produce commercial products, but they can't sell the library; it's free.

I will post preliminary specifications to net.micro.mac and net.micro.amiga
in the next week or so.

Cheers,


-- 
				-- Clayton Elwell
				Elwell@Ohio-State.CSNET
				Elwell%Ohio-State@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
				...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!elwell
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