I've been using 'Small' for a fair while now, here
from the site;
Small is a simple, typeless, 32-bit extension language with a C-like syntax. A Small "source" program is compiled to a binary file for optimal execution speed. The Small compiler outputs P-code (or bytecode) that subsequently runs on an abstract machine. Execution speed, stability, simplicity and a small footprint were essential design criteria for both the language and the abstract machine.
Small is a simple, C-like, language.
Small is a robust language with a robust compiler.
Small comes with an implementation of an abstract machine in portable C. The abstract machine is a set of C functions that you can easily link to an application or function library. By compiling the source code to P-code for an abstract machine (or "virtual machine"), Small is much faster than pure interpreters.
Small has a good interface to native functions (in C/C++); your application calls functions from -Small programs, Small programs call functions from your application.
Small is a 32-bit language, even when compiled with 16-bit DOS tools.
For porting purposes, Small is written in ANSI C as much as possible; Big Endian versus Little Endian is handled.
-Small is quick (especially with Marc Peter's assembler implementation and/or his "just-in-time" compiler)
-Small is, er..., small.
Small is free and it has a liberal license (you may use it for commercial applications, and you may also freely distribute modified sources or binaries ---though you take responsibility for those modifications).
I'll admit to not feeling quite good about the demise of a top tier RPG company. What does this bode for other companies such as RTG or Steve Jackson Gaming... ??
I still own the old Shadowrun 2nd ed. never upgraded to 3rd edition. Was not all that impressed by Shadorwun. The mix of magic + tech didnt sit well and made for an uneasy marriage imo.
I much more enjoyed the RTG offerings (cp2020, bubblegum crisis, CyberGeneration REvolution 2 was the pinnacle of real roleplaying in a cybertechy world, instead of guns guns guns guns... very good stuff cg/2)...
Will be interesting to see what happens to fasa's licenses.. the company was really run off shadowrun and battletech.
Battletech would be the only reason to really buy the company for. That title has a lifespan. books, toys, movies, games, cartoons, etc.
If you liked Lock Stock... and Snatch, you might wanna check out 'Two Hands', its basically an australian version sorta. very cool movie.
snatch definatly feels like lock stock 2, sure i can see the big differences, but it still feels like #2... also felt like there was a touch of the 'crays' in it as well...
if you read the PNP spec carefully, it clearly states that most things take affect AFTER a reboot.
most of the reboots in windows are caused by hardware modification (add/remove/alter) the state of a device. this requires a reboot.
i can only guess why installation of a program would cause a reboot. obviously some parts (dlls) are cached in memory and contain state information that cant handle a simple reload.
how otyher OS like beos get around the PNP + PCI specifications i dont know...
AMD managed to get rid of quite a bit of legacy for the 64 bit mode. Most of the utterly idiotic segmented switching is gone. There is a well defined supervisior mode and user mode. There is a SYSCALL instruction so the mess of "jump to that magic offset to get promoted to OS level" is gone and OSes will have a nice clean API.
amd has had syscall since K6 days. and intel has its own version (both are incompatible.)
and believe it or not, intel implemented it at the REQUEST of Microsoft!! (dont know if Win* actually uses it or not...)...
unfortunatly the AMD implementation was seriously buggy. reports say intels version is ok tho.
It seems that the test system was a K6-400 with a VIA ide chipset. It was probably an Apollo Pro, which isn't very well supported by Linux at the moment
Bzzzt. K6-400 is a super socket 7 cpu, requiring same chipset. the VIA chipset is NOT an Apollo Pro chipset, its an MVP3 (or mvp4 hybrid).
you didnt like dirty pair? hmm. DP is often staple to older anime fans. from back in the early 80's etc. Dirty Pair is often mentioned along with Kimagure Orange Road, Project A-KO, and UY.
DP + UY + KOR. the 'big three' of early anime for most 'american' fans.
iirc, it was a Dirty Pair fanfic that launched the anime fanfic explosion on usenet.
DP is legacy. the new dirty pair stuff is horrbillus agonisingus.
And as for Adam Warren's american version of DP, oooooh JIHAD-O-RAMA amongst DP fans....
Ahh another version of wince.joy. Those old holdovers still persist. Sure you get 32mb memory! wow.
Until you realise its not 'really' 32mb, since its 'partitioned' into X amount for storage (db's, text files, whatnot) and X amount for code.
terrible! whats worse is still apps are bloated. palm did it right, everything you need is in ROM, wince still moves too much off-rom, making programs far too big for a pda.
windows on a handheld pda is also not a good paradigm.
The Devices see to have good specs, large amounts of memory, good cpu, nice screen + rez. If they fixed the memory partitioning problems, the pda paradigm (ie: i like palms approach), and moving more into rom than into program memory, they could have a good contender.
btw, for _cheap_ palm knockoff thats actually very good, and VERY largly overlooked, the check ou the davinci at davinciworld and royal
I think, now that the palm 'paradigm' for pda's is clearly established, it is going to be the design to copy for all future pda. (not talking feature wise here, more look/functionality).
It's possible to look at the HTTP headers, to determine the user's preferred language(s). If you are asking them directly, you can always store their preference in a cookie so you don't have to ask next time
Thats fine and dandy if done correct. Here is a real-world example that happened to me; I have two languages set in IE4 at the time, en-au (australian english, as opposed to en for american english) and jp (japanese).
On viewing Debian's web site, it said hmm 'en-au' wtf? i dont know en-au. NEXT! jp! aah i know jp! and displayed the japanese pages.
Thats fine but... If your going to do such a thing, then you need to recognise ALL the langauge labels ala 'en-au'.
btw, i have not viewed the debian site in over a year+ so this problem may have been solved.
With the exception of the Matrix (and a few other Anime features like Ghost in the Shell) it's the only good Cyberpunk available (BladeRunner had punk, but no cyber).
hmm good anime cyberpunk. why Bubblegum Crisis of course. the main theme is even note for note bladerunner. and oh the references! heh.
genocyber (manga rocked, anime sucked).
armitage
megazone 23.
macross plus, etc. tonnes. hums.. through the fire and the smoke we will never give up hope. oooooooooouuuuuuuuur staaaaaaaaaaaar blaaaaaaaaaazers!
So we have kings novella online as an 'e-book'. But its static. page after page of text. What step does it take next?
How long until they think, hmm, the internet is interactive? There are small attempts at 'choose-your-own-adventure' style books (I hesitate to call them books as often they are light on the text and not of any great depth.)
What about the step beyond into true Interactive-Fiction? We have the Infocom 'zmachine' as a Java app.. When will ole Stevey King is 'programming' inform to create true online interactive fiction?
Are we going full circle to the point where old verb/noun advneture games evolved into prose filled literature into the realm of 'book publishing'.
Some IF authors (iirc, some of the Infocom guys) have already won literary awards for their writting in some games. Wouldnt it be great to see a merge of traditional novel authors and IF?
Taking authors that next step of 'fleshing' out characterisations to the point of 'talking' and getting an 'AI' response.
Now that would be fantastic future for authors and the book reading public.
How would publishing companies make money tho. An Image of a 'corporate' mud type system comes to mind. (Anyone played IFmud/ZorkMud, etc...)
Finally! I might be able to play my old games, Leisure suit larry, King's Quest etc. I just love those old Sierra AGI games..
You can! Its called Sarien, and I'm the primary author. Its comming along slowly (myself and claudio who do most of th work are very busy), but we are getting there. (we just had announcements for Mac and Acorn ports!!)..
If you want to play old AGI games on nix boxen from sun ultra's to linux xfree etc, Check out Sarien.
Re:This v2-os.. no protection.
on
V2 OS
·
· Score: 2
Seriously, that is a feature. There are a lot of engineers who directly access I/O ports and memory mapped I/O in their programs. Microsoft tries to make this difficult. Who wants to write a device driver just to twiddle some bits on an I/O board?
True, i can see and understand this, for IO ports one should be able to say, give me access to io ports in the range of xxxx-yyyy, if they are not hooked by the os (eg: so i cant take over the PIC and reprogram it, etc).
for things like memory mapped perhiperals, i'd say device drivers required etc;)
I still think, having no memory protection is a feature.
I think if you want an Os that engineers can plug in custom boards, a protected os may not be the way to go, BUT after testing when the boards are in practice i think a protected os would be the way to go ^_^....
The pros/cons for having memory/app/io protection etc, _imo_, outweigh those for not having protection.
hmm I read about this on os-news (http://www.osnews.com/) (funny how news stories migrate around).. and checked out the server well before it got/.'ed, so managed to read most of the info on it.
first, its NOT free. you dont get ALL the source. so its closed source. you get some example code and some binaries.
second, it has NO memory protection. NONE! (if you read their forum, in development, one of the v2 guys confirmed the question). no memory protect, so your app can crash the kernel (sounds like a mac os or dos)... Having no memory protection means you have to give 100% trust to all your programs + programmers to do the correct thing. heh and we all know that means nothing in the real world.
sounds crap. ok, so its written in 100% asm. whoa. big deal. if your into hobbyist os (check my FAQ!!:), there are lots of startup OSii in 100% asm. nothing to get wet knickers over.
(i found it VERY strange to see this story on slashdot, if you read the OS dev newsgroups or follow OSii boards, little osii like this are announced *ALL* the time at an alarming rate. there really isnt anything special about this one)
but.. BUT! Creating OSii isnt everyones cup of tea and its good to see people still doing it;)
mebbe i should make a distinction here about hobbyist os' and main stream type os. ala v2 vs linux. talk about apples and oranges.
linux has grown way past being a hobbyist os to a main stream os some time ago.
vsta + tinyos strikes me as being stuck inbetween, vsta more hobbyist than tinyos....
anyway.
if you do have an itch to scratch, you can check my faq for basic questions + answers on several os dev topics...
I admit to not reading every thread here but i did see mention of a slashdot magazine which got me thinking.
what would be interesting is say a 'weekly roundup' of the stories that genereated teh most comments over the week and have a 'summary' opinion or mini editorial etc. a recap of anything interesting that came out of the bludgeoning.. err debate. ^_^ hmm might not work tho. and who would do it. mebbe some moderators or forum manager.. hmmm... probably too time consuming.
true, also remember, magazines are several months in the making. so a 'december' issue is most probably put together in october/early nov. etc. and they just leave space for 'news tidbits'
Slashdot Mirror
from the site;
Small is a simple, typeless, 32-bit extension language with a C-like syntax. A Small "source" program is compiled to a binary file for optimal execution speed. The Small compiler outputs P-code (or bytecode) that subsequently runs on an abstract machine. Execution speed, stability, simplicity and a small footprint were essential design criteria for both the language and the abstract machine.
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
I much more enjoyed the RTG offerings (cp2020, bubblegum crisis, CyberGeneration REvolution 2 was the pinnacle of real roleplaying in a cybertechy world, instead of guns guns guns guns... very good stuff cg/2)...
Will be interesting to see what happens to fasa's licenses.. the company was really run off shadowrun and battletech.
Battletech would be the only reason to really buy the company for. That title has a lifespan. books, toys, movies, games, cartoons, etc.
guess its in wizzkids house now....
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
snatch definatly feels like lock stock 2, sure i can see the big differences, but it still feels like #2... also felt like there was a touch of the 'crays' in it as well...
a fair dinkum movie tho.
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
aah its andrew farrel and gareth powel(sp)'s heavy man! the henchman. sigh. i miss adventurers realm -_-
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
its interesting to read its old opcode spec list and other tidbits... anyone fancy an emulator?
mercury delay lines and drum storage. yum!
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
if you read the PNP spec carefully, it clearly states that most things take affect AFTER a reboot. most of the reboots in windows are caused by hardware modification (add/remove/alter) the state of a device. this requires a reboot. i can only guess why installation of a program would cause a reboot. obviously some parts (dlls) are cached in memory and contain state information that cant handle a simple reload. how otyher OS like beos get around the PNP + PCI specifications i dont know...
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
amd has had syscall since K6 days. and intel has its own version (both are incompatible.) and believe it or not, intel implemented it at the REQUEST of Microsoft!! (dont know if Win* actually uses it or not...)...
unfortunatly the AMD implementation was seriously buggy. reports say intels version is ok tho.
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
Bzzzt. K6-400 is a super socket 7 cpu, requiring same chipset. the VIA chipset is NOT an Apollo Pro chipset, its an MVP3 (or mvp4 hybrid).
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
you didnt like dirty pair? hmm. DP is often staple to older anime fans. from back in the early
80's etc. Dirty Pair is often mentioned along with Kimagure Orange Road, Project A-KO, and UY.
DP + UY + KOR. the 'big three' of early anime for most 'american' fans.
iirc, it was a Dirty Pair fanfic that launched the anime fanfic explosion on usenet.
DP is legacy. the new dirty pair stuff is horrbillus agonisingus.
And as for Adam Warren's american version of DP, oooooh JIHAD-O-RAMA amongst DP fans....
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
Until you realise its not 'really' 32mb, since its 'partitioned' into X amount for storage (db's, text files, whatnot) and X amount for code.
terrible! whats worse is still apps are bloated. palm did it right, everything you need is in ROM, wince still moves too much off-rom, making programs far too big for a pda.
windows on a handheld pda is also not a good paradigm.
The Devices see to have good specs, large amounts of memory, good cpu, nice screen + rez. If they fixed the memory partitioning problems, the pda paradigm (ie: i like palms approach), and moving more into rom than into program memory, they could have a good contender.
btw, for _cheap_ palm knockoff thats actually very good, and VERY largly overlooked, the check ou the davinci at davinciworld and royal
I think, now that the palm 'paradigm' for pda's is clearly established, it is going to be the design to copy for all future pda. (not talking feature wise here, more look/functionality).
ja matte ne
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
Thats fine and dandy if done correct. Here is a real-world example that happened to me; I have two languages set in IE4 at the time, en-au (australian english, as opposed to en for american english) and jp (japanese).
On viewing Debian's web site, it said hmm 'en-au' wtf? i dont know en-au. NEXT! jp! aah i know jp! and displayed the japanese pages.
Thats fine but... If your going to do such a thing, then you need to recognise ALL the langauge labels ala 'en-au'.
btw, i have not viewed the debian site in over a year+ so this problem may have been solved.
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
hmm good anime cyberpunk. why Bubblegum Crisis of course. the main theme is even note for note bladerunner. and oh the references! heh.
genocyber (manga rocked, anime sucked).
armitage
megazone 23.
macross plus, etc. tonnes. hums.. through the fire and the smoke we will never give up hope. oooooooooouuuuuuuuur staaaaaaaaaaaar blaaaaaaaaaazers!
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
How long until they think, hmm, the internet is interactive? There are small attempts at 'choose-your-own-adventure' style books (I hesitate to call them books as often they are light on the text and not of any great depth.)
What about the step beyond into true Interactive-Fiction? We have the Infocom 'zmachine' as a Java app.. When will ole Stevey King is 'programming' inform to create true online interactive fiction?
Are we going full circle to the point where old verb/noun advneture games evolved into prose filled literature into the realm of 'book publishing'.
Some IF authors (iirc, some of the Infocom guys) have already won literary awards for their writting in some games. Wouldnt it be great to see a merge of traditional novel authors and IF?
Taking authors that next step of 'fleshing' out characterisations to the point of 'talking' and getting an 'AI' response.
Now that would be fantastic future for authors and the book reading public.
How would publishing companies make money tho. An Image of a 'corporate' mud type system comes to mind. (Anyone played IFmud/ZorkMud, etc...)
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
You can! Its called Sarien, and I'm the primary author. Its comming along slowly (myself and claudio who do most of th work are very busy), but we are getting there. (we just had announcements for Mac and Acorn ports!!)..
If you want to play old AGI games on nix boxen from sun ultra's to linux xfree etc, Check out Sarien.
www.mega-tokyo.com/sarien
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
True, i can see and understand this, for IO ports one should be able to say, give me access to io ports in the range of xxxx-yyyy, if they are not hooked by the os (eg: so i cant take over the PIC and reprogram it, etc).
for things like memory mapped perhiperals, i'd say device drivers required etc ;)
I still think, having no memory protection is a feature.
I think if you want an Os that engineers can plug in custom boards, a protected os may not be the way to go, BUT after testing when the boards are in practice i think a protected os would be the way to go ^_^....
The pros/cons for having memory/app/io protection etc, _imo_, outweigh those for not having protection.
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
first, its NOT free. you dont get ALL the source. so its closed source. you get some example code and some binaries.
second, it has NO memory protection. NONE! (if you read their forum, in development, one of the v2 guys confirmed the question). no memory protect, so your app can crash the kernel (sounds like a mac os or dos)... Having no memory protection means you have to give 100% trust to all your programs + programmers to do the correct thing. heh and we all know that means nothing in the real world.
sounds crap. ok, so its written in 100% asm. whoa. big deal. if your into hobbyist os (check my FAQ!!:), there are lots of startup OSii in 100% asm. nothing to get wet knickers over.
(i found it VERY strange to see this story on slashdot, if you read the OS dev newsgroups or follow OSii boards, little osii like this are announced *ALL* the time at an alarming rate. there really isnt anything special about this one)
but.. BUT! Creating OSii isnt everyones cup of tea and its good to see people still doing it ;)
mebbe i should make a distinction here about hobbyist os' and main stream type os. ala v2 vs linux. talk about apples and oranges.
linux has grown way past being a hobbyist os to a main stream os some time ago.
vsta + tinyos strikes me as being stuck inbetween, vsta more hobbyist than tinyos....
anyway.
if you do have an itch to scratch, you can check my faq for basic questions + answers on several os dev topics...
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
what would be interesting is say a 'weekly roundup' of the stories that genereated teh most comments over the week and have a 'summary' opinion or mini editorial etc. a recap of anything interesting that came out of the bludgeoning.. err debate. ^_^ hmm might not work tho. and who would do it. mebbe some moderators or forum manager.. hmmm... probably too time consuming.
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
true, also remember, magazines are several months in the making. so a 'december' issue is most probably put together in october/early nov. etc. and they just leave space for 'news tidbits'
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!