[OT] really?

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 09:13:53AM -0400, Eric Dunbar wrote:

> 2. "Fat binary" tools come on the market that will compile an app for
> i86 and generate a fat binary that will run under both Windows and OS
> X (and, when that happens, Linux may come along for the ride so that
> would be good for Linux).

Probably not Linux. MacOS is built on a BSD kernel which is almost
linux compatible but won't run the same binaries, plus a windowing
system (Aqua) that does not run on linux and is NOT open source.

Linux binaries could easily be accomdated with a translation layer that
would translate Linux calls to BSD calls, such a layer exisits for
(under linux) for x86 Solaris directly and the binary standard of x86 UNIX.

Since the calls are almost exactly the same, the translation would be
simple and fast. X windows would also be supported as it is now.

> 3. Direct access to h/w is just as discouraged under Windows as it is
> under any other OS and will not really do much for 3rd party
> developers. Gamewriters especially write and use their own libraries
> and industry standard graphics programming languages.

That's what DirectX is for. That and what used to be called Direct 3d
(now a part of DirectX) is how game writers access the hardware directly.

That's also the problem with WINE, the only group who has done real work
on Direct 3d, is Transgaming, and their agenda is to make the high end
games work on high end hardware (which makes business sense), but leaves
out a lot of functions. 


Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667  IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
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See U.S. patent applications  20050108591,  20050107165.