[NTLK] Restarting Newton development?!

[Steven Frank]

> On Aug 1, 2018, at 10:20 PM, Forrest <newton_phoenix at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> Admittedly not knowing all that much about programming (I worked with BASIC and 6502 machine language 35 years ago), I had a thought when I read the comment about computers being so much more powerful now.
> 
> I postulate this: would it be easier to run said software on an older 32-bit Mac, develop much of it there, and then port it over/upgrade it to 64 bit when the proper time/necessity arises?

Possibly, but I think the benefits of bringing it up to 64-bit would be so much greater that it'd be worth tackling early.  That way if/when new developers want to contribute, they don't need to acquire / keep around legacy Mac hardware to do so.

I wonder if it would be as simple as just recompiling with 64-bit types, and having effectively a 64-bit NewtonScript runtime, since we're (I think?) targeting modern architectures rather than actual Newton hardware.  Of course that wouldn't be able to run any existing NewtonScript apps built for 32-bit without recompilation (I think?), which would include all the NewtonScript in the Newton ROMs.  :-I  Could we just ignore/mask out the upper 32-bits??

I have a lot to learn about NewtonScript... 

Steven