Subject: Re: Development of Abiword for MacOS X ?
From: Bryan Prusha (bryanp@wolfram.com)
Date: Tue Feb 08 2000 - 11:00:12 CST
At 10:38 -0600 2/8/00, Jeffrey J Barbose wrote:
>Except for word-count stuff, i fail to see where a slight speed hit
>makes much of a difference in a word processor.
>
>Beyond that, I think in making a non-Carbon app, attention should at
>least be paid to where things will have to be rewritten anyhow.
>
>I also think that targeting 8.1 as a minimum is NOT an elitist statement.
>
>
>
>At 10:04 AM +0100 2/8/00, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
>>According to Jeffrey J Barbose <barbose@howland.com>:
>>>
>>> i might take this one step further and just make it Carbon-compliant
>>> from the start. As you said, Carbon IS the Mac APIs, minus some of
>>> the very low level stuff.
>>
>>No.
>>
>>I think we should do both a MacOS Classic and a Carbon version. It is not a
>>hard task to do both, and classic API would be faster on non MacOS X systems
>>(they will still be around for years).
>>
>>But lets get a MacOS version running.
>>
>>Hub
Of course, our main work now should be getting the Classic (Apple's
name for the original toolbox API) version of AbiWord up and running. The
best base to create a Carbon app is an up to date, bug free Classic app.
As for speed, a Carbon app is THE native format for MacOS X. Only Carbon
apps will benefit from the preemptive multitasking and protected memory of
MacOS X. Also, while 8.1 is the minimum for running Carbon apps, it is a
free upgrade from system 8.0 which has been shipping for about 3 years. By
the time AbiWord becomes a viable product, there will be relatively few
pre-8.0 users left given the huge benefits of MacOS X and the fact that
most upcoming product revisions will be updated for Carbon. Users will no
longer be able to purchase new products to run on their pre-8.1 systems.
I'm not trying to sound elitist, I just think that's the way things will
fall over the next year or two.
---------------------------------------------------
Bryan Prusha Wolfram Research, Inc.
Coding is life. The rest is just 1's and 0's.
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