Subject: RE: factors to consider for the Mac port
From: Stefan Csomor (csomor@advancedconcepts.ch)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2000 - 01:34:53 CST
Hi,
I'm the main author of the wxwindows 2.x port for mac, so while my personal
preference would of course be the wxwindows port for abiword, the following
remarks should not biased by this fact
> 1. Choose solutions which favor people's existing hardware.
we are delivering commercial-shrink wrapped software which has a very broad
reach, therefore we have system 7.x and even 68k support in the current
port, based on comparisons of all known bugs and needed workarounds in the
7.x system releases, we decided to ask for 7.6 minimal and Open Transport.
installed at some time last year we still had 25% of our users on pre 8
systems. this year we won't have a 68k version anymore, but still be running
on 7.6 and above. if you have such a code base adding carbon support is a
matter of a week at maximum. I think it is still worth the effort having pre
system 8 support
> 2. Try to hold down the cost for additional Mac developers.
this is a very intersting point which I neglected due to time constraints,
since the pace of change, bugs and fixes is not providing backward
compatibility until the xml export came with the latest cw version, this is
giving problems. if I had some spare days I'd make it compile under mpw
which is public.
3. Avoid legal minefields.
no comments on the legal implications, I've decided not to use pp because I
wanted the flexibility to adapt to new technologies very easily, which is
not the case when using such a framework as pp
Regards,
Stefan Csomor
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