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From: woods@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Greg Woods)
Date: Fri, 26-Aug-88 22:24:04 EDT
Message-ID: <1988Aug26.222404.15244@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Organization: G. A. W. Consulting
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport,comp.sys.att,comp.databases
Subject: Re: 386 Unix (In)compatibilities Summary
Summary: Where's the spec. for i386 binary compatibility?
References: <802@vsi.UUCP> <429@uport.UUCP> <819@vsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU (Greg Woods)
Distribution: comp
Keywords: ABI 386 binary compatibility hype

In article <819@vsi.UUCP> sullivan@vsi.UUCP (Michael T Sullivan) writes:
> In article <429@uport.UUCP>, plocher@uport.UUCP (John Plocher) writes:
> > In article <802@vsi.UUCP> sullivan@vsi.UUCP (Michael T Sullivan) writes:
> > uPort vs. 386/ix compatibility is there by DESIGN.
> 
> Also, if the compatibility is there by design, why don't we hear more about
> it.  After I made the original posting I received a lot of requests to
> post whether the two were compatible.  Seems to me if they were _by design_
> then there'd be a lot more made of it.

I'd guess (from experience) that often when things "are" _by design_, it
seems obvious to those involved that it will be obvious to everyone
else, and when it's so important a factor, it should be so blatantly
obvious to scream out its existence.

Finally, to alleviate a lot of apparent confusion and ignorance,
Interactive Systems has begun plugging this "design feature".  Their
advertisement on p. 15 of the Sept. Unix World should help quite some
what.  [ I just realized that it's Sept. NEXT month... the publishing
world is always trying to trick me! ] I assume that they will continue
this trend in the future.  Thank {god, whomever} that they have a
reasonably good advertising agency (that gets paid I hope), and that
they have finally started to do some market research.

Is there an actual ABI standard (which is the same as the current
(apparent) de-facto standard) for the 386 Unix?  (ie:  does everyone
agree on one thing for once?) :-)

[ Look I learned how to spell "compatibility".  Why doesn't SysV DWB
have look? ]
-- 
						Greg Woods.

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