Re: [NTLK] Native installer for NCU and OS X Update

From: Paul Guyot (pguyot_at_kallisys.net)
Date: Sun Nov 20 2005 - 22:06:13 PST


Le 21 nov. 05 =E0 02:50, Shawn Baker a =E9crit :

> I understand the want to go
> with a cross platform language, but it looks like OSX has the only
> program written with the DCL.

Not really.
Paperback online book maker is powered by the DCL:
http://misato.chuma.org/paperback/

The DCL is layered. The bottom part are written in C++. Escale's =20
interface to the DCL is nearly purely in ObjC++.

There are several technical problems that were not entirely solved:
- NewtonOS's dock interface isn't compatible with NIE and you get a =20
-4 error randomly when browsing over TCP/IP.
- MacOS X AppleTalk interface sucks. Badly. This we more or less went =20=

over it.
- There is a serious bug between the Airport Extreme base stations, =20
MacOS X and the Newton implementation of AppleTalk (actually on the =20
Airport Extreme side) so you cannot connect to an AppleTalk server.
- MacOS X shuts down an interface whenever nothing is connected. =20
NewtonOS does the same. It's a real nightmare for one-to-one ethernet =20=

connections.

The truth about the DCL and Escale is that:
- synchronizing isn't as easy as Newton users seem to think. Apple =20
came out with a nice solution in the Newton dock protocol. The DCL =20
implements most of it, but not all. iSync is good but also buggy (got =20=

two times my contacts in my mobile, lost some contacts in Address =20
Book, things that should never happen).
- I always found it boring to translate a .doc to newton data and the =20=

other way around, so this was never implemented.
- it's difficult to get a networking program working through all the =20
interfaces wanted here with all the little nightmares of each =20
interface and all the individual cases.
- at some point, we felt that the community was less friendly to =20
developers than required for such a project. There are so many =20
expectations, so many features wanted, but users do not realize how =20
complex it is and how much work must be done to get things right in =20
the end. nSync is a good example. Many Newton specificities were not =20
taken into account in its design and it would require a huge work to =20
fix the program to take them into account.

If anyone wants to work on it, feel free to do so. It's an open =20
source project.
The latest code is on sourceforge CVS:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/klibs/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/newton-dcl/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/escale/

Paul
--=20
Ministre ultrapl=E9nipotentiaire en disponibilit=E9.
Mobile. Sans baignoire fixe.
http://www.kallisys.com/
http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~guyot/

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