Subject: Re: factors to consider for the Mac port
From: Bryan Prusha (bryanp@wolfram.com)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2000 - 11:00:11 CST
At 18:50 -0600 2/8/00, Paul Rohr wrote:
>Wow! While I was out of town for LinuxWorld, there was a huge flurry of
>traffic from folks discussing how the Mac port should be done. This is very
>cool.
>
>As best I can tell, all of the following issues are currently in play:
>
> - which MacOS flavors (7.x, 8.x, 9.x, or X.x) to target
> - which APIs (Classic vs. Carbon) best reach these targetted users
> - the framework holy war (PowerPlant vs. Toolbox)
> - other toolchain questions (compiler version, build system, etc.)
>
>I'm not a hard-core Mac developer, so I'm happy to defer to whatever
>technical consensus comes out of these discussions. There are many
>practical tradeoffs to be made here, and I'm not going to be writing that
>code. You are. What's important is that you come up with workable
>solutions *you* can continue to live with.
>
>However, here are some general guidelines you might want to consider:
>
>1. Choose solutions which favor people's existing hardware.
>============================================================
It is VERY simple when Carbonizing an app to hide all Carbon
specific code behind #if CARBON flags, thus building either a Carbon of
Classic app at will. I do this all the time. So, if a user wants one or
the other, we just flip a switch and recompile. BTW, Apple just released
yesterday their Carbon 1.0.2 SDK which inculdes stub and implementation
libraries, updated Universal Headers, and Sample Code (even the new Aqua HI
guidelines!). Everything you need to get coding w/ Carbon from MacOS 8.1
and up.
http://developer.apple.com/sdk/index.html
>2. Try to hold down the cost for additional Mac developers.
>============================================================
I believe we should strive to remain 100% compatible with the
freely downloadable MPW. I am assuming some amount of money must be payed
out to get PowerPlant from MetroWerks. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
>3. Avoid legal minefields.
>===========================
I am unaware of the GPL compatability of PowerPlant.
>4. Code wins.
>==============
I intend to write all my Mac specific code with Apple's openly
published Classic and Carbon APIs.
>5. May the best code win.
>==========================
Let's see what happens. =)
---------------------------------------------------
Bryan Prusha Wolfram Research, Inc.
Coding is life. The rest is just 1's and 0's.
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