The 3D stuff still runs best on my Voodoo2, but the drivers for the nVidia are getting there and hopefully XF86 4.0 will be ready by the time.
In contrast to the Matrox G200/G400 driver, where there is quite a lot of development activity from the free software community, the RIVA driver came from nvidia and (to my best knowledge) has not been polished by anyone else yet.
In fact I am not sure if anyone from the free scene has understood the disclosed RIVA specs up to point yet, that it can be decided if those specs are complete enough to come up with driver improvements.
It took about a half dozen people (some of the best and brightest out there) something like 4-6 months of work to achieve what we've done so far with the G200/G400 driver for GLX- and we're not done yet... (Note: I've been a lurker on the list for the development team- I have done no coding for the GLX project...YET.).
I know. (Note: I submit patches occasionally and maintain the FreeBSD port, cf the FAQ):-)
When it officially ships as a GLX driver, I honestly think it will make Linux look good.
I am quite sure the Matrox and eventually the nvidia hardware device driver will stay, the rest (like the GLX implemention) might be replaced by sources from SGI. We might eventually have to wait until XFree86 4, before Precision Insight puts all cards on the table and evaluation starts. When I remember correctly, they announced support for a whole bunch of cards, but were not willing to reveal which ones.
In fact SuSE does some 3d work too. Their scheme for MLX looks quite sophisticated (look here) but I don't know what is going on there right now. MLX was announced together with support for GLINT and Permedia chips.
Alas the only ones I noticed being active lately were the openprojects GLX group and the PI folks. That is why I said I doubt that the new SuSE drivers feature 3d.
A little while back I helped a guy install rh6.0 on a box that had a Diamond Viper 550, I couldn't get the 3d stuff to work (q2 or q3), but the 2d was sweet, and I figure 3d will get worked out in the next few months.
My Diamond Viper 500 (TNT chipset) works fine with the glx.on.openprojects.net RIVA driver on my FreeBSD system. (The glx stuff is pretty much portable between Linux and FreeBSD)
So I am surprised that you had no luck. Try again!
Where should the hardware driver/renderer come from?
I have not checked, but am pretty sure that it is 2d accelerated only, like their former servers. However it might have all the proper hooks for a GLX module and associated hardware renderer, but I doubt that they provide one.
Windows is pretty darn ugly and clunky, SGI has overpriced software, Unix still has The Fonts from the Bottom of the Wastebasket
Yes, the X11 standard fonts look like the bottom of a baboon. I know there are true type servers available, but honestly, as long as these and some decent fonts are not part of a standard setup - what is it good?
Every Java program I've ever written that I tested on another platform/OS/Java implementation has worked.
Sorry, but I have different experiences.
I wrote an applet that displayed chemical data and tried it in various Java environments. This being Netscape 3, Netscape 4, Sun jdk, MS Explorer 4 and Explorer 5, under Windows 95, Windows NT, Solaris, and FreeBSD.
Good news is, that it worked on most of platforms, albeit good only under jdk appletviewer and Netscape 3 as these were the environments I developed on. Even there it was not perfect, small things like the behaviour of the little boxes on the scrollbars was not the same.
I admit it was a delightful experience to see it working on so different platforms.
Bad news is that after some time Java evolution did not allow me to compile the source code anymore. I accept that.
But what really gets me mad is that is not possible to execute the class binaries from an app written in mid 97 two years later. This is a very bad thing.
You have got to be kidding. Sun doesn't make money on Java. It's a huge money pit.
I don't know what money flows back to Sun, but certainly it generated a big market that sells lots of books and allows some lots of ompiler companies like Borland, Symantec and (to a degree) IBM to stay in business.
Compare that diverse landscape to the C++ sitiation on Win32: there are only two serious compilers left Microsoft Visual C++ for the masses who depend on perfect interfacing to the latest Windows gizmos and gcc (cygwin, mingwin) for those who value portability and free software.
What's./configure on Windows? The world isn't Unix only.
What are you talking?
marc> uname -a CYGWIN_NT-4.0 PC_108 20.1 (0.3/1/1) 1998-12-3 20:39:18 i686 unknown marc>./configure loading cache./config.cache checking for a BSD compatible install... (cached)/mvw/bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... (cached) yes checking for working aclocal... found checking for working autoconf... found checking for working automake... found checking for working autoheader... found checking for working makeinfo... found checking host system type... i686-pc-cygwin checking for mawk... (cached) gawk checking for gcc... (cached) gcc checking whether the C compiler (gcc ) works... yes checking whether the C compiler (gcc ) is a cross-compiler... no checking whether we are using GNU C... (cached) yes checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes checking for c++... (cached) c++ checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) works... yes checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) is a cross-compiler... no checking whether we are using GNU C++... (cached) yes checking whether c++ accepts -g... (cached) yes checking for a BSD compatible install.../mvw/bin/install -c checking whether ln -s works... (cached) yes checking whether byte ordering is bigendian... (cached) no checking size of long... (cached) 4 updating cache./config.cache creating./config.status creating Makefile creating config.h linking./cdi_cygwin.cpp to cdi.cpp linking./cdi_cygwin.h to cdi.h marc>
Works like a dream.. allows for an easy portation, like here of the CD Index client to Win32.
The hairy issues where Linux and FreeBSD differ are hidden somewhere in XFree86. Porting Mesa is relativley easy. Next tougher job will be providing FreeBSD kernel support for DRI and here a member from the FreeBSD core team has already indicated interest so that I have no doubt that it will get ported timely.
Of course the basic idea of the effort mentioned in this Slashdot article, interchangeability of OpenGL libs is important for FreeBSD as well, and we will try to find an appropriate solution and join discussion. Maybe it will differ in some aspects (our shared lib versioning scheme is different than the one from Linux, so we might not be able to use a solution one to one) but I believe it will not be too far from it away.
I see this as a good thing for Linux. Means that hopefully they will moake ports of the rest of there stuf that uses OpenGL to Linux too. I hope that this is not just a promise and they follow thru.
We owe much to id Software, without them OpenGL would have not been established widely on Win32. Now they have OpenGL, we have OpenGL and game publishers and other software companies will have it easier than ever to create powerful applications for both platforms.
Further it is a joy to have John Carmack working on the open glx Matrox driver. This guy is dedicated to the subject and certainly not only money driven.
Linux is uniting *NIXes. Solaris and FreeBSD already have the means to run some Linux programs, this makes Linux binaries "almost" a default format.
Well, as a former OS/2 user I have very mixed feeling on this subject, as OS/2 emulation for Win16 was so good that nearly no native app was created, in the end the death for that operating system.
FreeBSD's Linux emulation is very good. So you can run Netscape, RealAudio Player,Myth2 demo, Quake3 under that emulation layer. Like in the case of OS/2, Linux apps might actually run better under FreeBSD in some regards. You even get the same Linux headaches (like clib/glib madness) under the emulation.:-)
However it is just an option and not the native ABI and we will strive to keep porting and developing for FreeBSD. So we have native hardware acclerated XFree86 (2d) and Mesa (3d) versions and apps.
Drop me a mail at 3d@freebsd.org if you need more information.
(..) evolved standards, resulting from a bunch of people trying to solve a specific problem and iterating towards a solution (e.g. Gl->OpenGL->Web3D?) (..)
The problem is that it is extremely hard to create universal standards that work well the FIRST time. Usually at least two or more implementations hitting real-world bottlenecks are necessary to define a flexible standard that covers enough variances of the problem space for it to be widely adopted. Plus major issues in allowing it to evolve over time without any preconception of future technologies (witness Fortran 66, 77, 8x, 90, 95, etc). This learning curve puts a serious crimp on progress, especially as the hardware tech evolves faster than software development.
Well spoken. It might interest you folks that one of the main developers behind Direct3d has another 3d API out of the door that is a nice C++ library for Win32 and Unix:
It will be used for the above mentioned Web3D format. Works very nice under FreeBSD. Alas I recommend hardware 3d acceleration (I use a TNT) for some of the samples. Backends are OpenGL and our special friend aalib!
i'm gonna withhold my happy dance until SGI agrees to port Alias and their other tools to linux instead of just using linux boxen for rendering
For my part I would be already glad, if they would open up their electropaint screen saver sources.:)
Fun aside, please remember that SGI is undergoing a big change. Having a Silicon Graphics workstation has been a bit like having a Mercedes-Benz car. This was very capable (not always the fastest, but always with stunning graphics and that special flair) and expensive hardware, and the software was not what a PC user would call cheap either.
So they need to make the transition from relativly low volume/high priced to high volume/low priced.
Once the demand is there, the software will follow. In some months from now we have really powerful 3d on the free operating systems, people will take it seriously and consider using these platforms for serious work, asking for serious tools. It will happen.
XiG and MetroX may not be interested in doing their stuff for anything other than Linux- but I know that the GLX acceleration project has at least one FreeBSD person working on the Matrox G200 support for *BSD.
No worry about FreeBSD. The Mesa/Glide combination has been in the ports collection for some time now, and we have the glx from openprojects.net working too, yielding accelerated 3d for Matrox G200/G400 and nvidia RIVA128/128ZX/TNT/TNT2 etc. Grab it here:
to participate in the discussion of this exciting subject or send me an e-mail to 3d@freebsd.org if you have any questions left.
Add to that support for the Matrox G400, NVidia TNT2,,,
See my comment above, on how to get it. Please use it and help testing!
.. and several others I'm not quite yet at liberty to mention (Work on these chips have just begun, and I don't want to get false hopes up!)- all with open source code and no black magic that would keep someone from implementing it under *BSD, etc. under any chipset that will work with an adapter.
Bet on it. If the information get freed it is just a matter of time that it will be implemented.
and you've got OpenGL trying to be Mesa compatible now.
That is not the case. What those folks try to achieve is making OpenGL backends interchangable.
So that you get the latest hot 3d app and am able to use it with Mesa3d, or some OpenGL licensed lib from Xi or maybe even SGI without recompiling.
Why don't the SGI guys just beef up OpenGL support in Mesa?
In my opinion the SGI folks are already very generous. For example Brian Paul got access to the OpenGL conformance tests. So far we got an amazing Mesa 3d library. It might become one of the best OpenGL implementations in the future, but this will require our sweat in the first place and not SGIs. Fair game.
BTW calling Mesa OpenGL conformance is not just a matter of putting Mesa through those mentioned tests, the system to be tested is a bit larger and consists also of the card drivers and maybe even cards and screens - I don't know the details, but it is more than just Mesa.
(..) however it did not have its mitochondria replaced, thus the mtDNA of the egg would continue to be replicated and become Dolly's mtDNS
I have read (don't know how true it is) that our digestive system is working only if a certain collection of bacteria settles in our intestines. A new born is supposed to get this bacteria from his mother.
I have no idea, about how individual that inteestine flora is, but it could form another factor to consider that has to be duplicated for a perfect clone.
This idea of Lucas, to recycle the scientific fact that the Mitochondria (the power plants of the cell) have their own DNA and thus might be symbionts to us in his fictive religion was far more annoying to me than the Jar Jar binks character.
I wonder if another fact, that Mitochondric DNA is passed from the mother only to the child, will be used too. This was useful to determine the gentic ancestor of humanity, BTW.
I have a cell phone. I'd like one of these GameBoys. For games.
I bought two new cell phones (*) last week, one for my wife and one for me, and was quite surprised to see them equiped with calculator, calendar function and.. games! It is even possible to play the class snake game from phone to phone via the infrared port.
Wouldn't be surprised if I could program these things myself. I submitted a question on this subject to "Ask Slashdot" but got now entry yet
(*) cell phones: Nokia 6150, a $75 if bought with 2 years phone contract
(..) but essentially, if you vote to heavily in either direction (..) your M2 may be discarded.
Obviously people believe in some kind of "the good is in the middle of the distribution" wisdom. My uncle told me about the painting "The last supper" that it appropriatley represented statistics of society (1 saint and 1 criminal among 13 people) and a colleague told me the story that a former company he worked for always discarded bids at the statistical extremes without evaluation.
(..) to pick from people who read an "Average" amount of Slashdot a day (weeding out occasional readers and obsessive overreaders)
I suspected that the login procedure on Slashdot (and other sites) could be used to generate digital traces of a readers activity. Not unproblematic.
The reason StarOffice is not being released as Free Software is that Sun still wants some semblance of control over it (they did spend millions on it after all).
Don't forget the possibility that their code might suck incredibly and is not suitable for publication.
If their present cross plattform base libraries/graphical user interface libraries -this is known as StarView library- has not evolved quite a lot from the stuff they had in 1994, than I am not surprised they don't release it. I know that stuff, something for IOCCC connaisseurs.
Initial Mozilla code was clean compared to the StarView mess. Sorry to be that harsh, I was involved in porting attempts of that cr.. legacy software to MS VC++ 5 and 6 and got some very er.. professional work days due to it.
I'd rather convert million LOC FORTRAN libs to C++.
StarOffice practically own the German private market,
Are you joking?
This completely against my perceiption. I know companies using old Wordperfect, but never saw anyone using StarOffice. The only folks using StarOffice I know are some people from university. I doubt if any Microsoft competitor holds more than a 10% market share in Germany for word processors and spread sheets.
and this is very attractive, as German companies are very unsatisfied with MS and more likely to switch than their US couterparts.
The only differenece between Germany and US is probably that Germans are more likely to know the StarOffice product. The sad reality is people using MS Office at work, getting it bundled with new PCs or simply pirating it.
At least I, as a (unvoluntary) user/developer of the old StarView library source code, am very curious to see what StarDivision uses in its latest release. Alas that old stuff (from 1992-94) is so wicked that I am quite sure (otherwise Sun is in trouble) they changed their library design considerably.
Occasionally it happens that one posts a message twice (too much flipping back and forth between pages in the browser and that stuff happens). Or posts a second message that just contains some bit more but is identical in the first part.
Any solution to this problem?
I am not sure if it is too much, if I could delete it myself but how about allowing me to flag it for deletion by some moderator - so two folks are involved?
Fun aside, VC++ has some er.. strange points, like two versions of the C++ standard lib, pre-ISO C++ and ISO C++ (Dinkum).
What bit me was, that the _declspec attributes vanished, when linking several libs to a big lib, so I had to link the big lib from the object files (that constitute the smaller libs) directly.
Slashdot Mirror
In contrast to the Matrox G200/G400 driver, where there is quite a lot of development activity from the free software community, the RIVA driver came from nvidia and (to my best knowledge) has not been polished by anyone else yet.
In fact I am not sure if anyone from the free scene has understood the disclosed RIVA specs up to point yet, that it can be decided if those specs are complete enough to come up with driver improvements.
I know. (Note: I submit patches occasionally and maintain the FreeBSD port, cf the FAQ) :-)
When it officially ships as a GLX driver, I honestly think it will make Linux look good.
I am quite sure the Matrox and eventually the nvidia hardware device driver will stay, the rest (like the GLX implemention) might be replaced by sources from SGI. We might eventually have to wait until XFree86 4, before Precision Insight puts all cards on the table and evaluation starts. When I remember correctly, they announced support for a whole bunch of cards, but were not willing to reveal which ones.
In fact SuSE does some 3d work too. Their scheme for MLX looks quite sophisticated (look here) but I don't know what is going on there right now. MLX was announced together with support for GLINT and Permedia chips.
Alas the only ones I noticed being active lately were the openprojects GLX group and the PI folks. That is why I said I doubt that the new SuSE drivers feature 3d.
My Diamond Viper 500 (TNT chipset) works fine with the glx.on.openprojects.net RIVA driver on my FreeBSD system. (The glx stuff is pretty much portable between Linux and FreeBSD)
So I am surprised that you had no luck. Try again!
I have not checked, but am pretty sure that it is 2d accelerated only, like their former servers. However it might have all the proper hooks for a GLX module and associated hardware renderer, but I doubt that they provide one.
Yes, the X11 standard fonts look like the bottom of a baboon. I know there are true type servers available, but honestly, as long as these and some decent fonts are not part of a standard setup - what is it good?
by BSD_Beck (beckat7thdesigndotcom) on Monday September 13, @14:12 EDT ( #)
(User Info) http://www.7thdesign.com
I love that guy! What a whacko!
It is actually a bit weird watching a guy calling himself "BSD_Beck" worshipping a CS guy from Berkely who wrote a B.. er Linux book. :-)
If I go by the name, then she has something to do with advanced cooking (i.e. chemistry)
Nitrozac = Nitrous acid?
What does not fit is the Macintosh. Those who are strong in the FORTRAN don't tend to use quiche boxes.
Sorry, but I have different experiences.
I wrote an applet that displayed chemical data and tried it in various Java environments. This being Netscape 3, Netscape 4, Sun jdk, MS Explorer 4 and Explorer 5, under Windows 95, Windows NT, Solaris, and FreeBSD.
Good news is, that it worked on most of platforms, albeit good only under jdk appletviewer and Netscape 3 as these were the environments I developed on. Even there it was not perfect, small things like the behaviour of the little boxes on the scrollbars was not the same.
I admit it was a delightful experience to see it working on so different platforms.
Bad news is that after some time Java evolution did not allow me to compile the source code anymore. I accept that.
But what really gets me mad is that is not possible to execute the class binaries from an app written in mid 97 two years later. This is a very bad thing.
I don't know what money flows back to Sun, but certainly it generated a big market that sells lots of books and allows some lots of ompiler companies like Borland, Symantec and (to a degree) IBM to stay in business.
Compare that diverse landscape to the C++ sitiation on Win32: there are only two serious compilers left Microsoft Visual C++ for the masses who depend on perfect interfacing to the latest Windows gizmos and gcc (cygwin, mingwin) for those who value portability and free software.
What are you talking?
marc> uname -a ./configure ./config.cache /mvw/bin/install -c /mvw/bin/install -c ./config.cache ./config.status ./cdi_cygwin.cpp to cdi.cpp ./cdi_cygwin.h to cdi.h
CYGWIN_NT-4.0 PC_108 20.1 (0.3/1/1) 1998-12-3 20:39:18 i686 unknown
marc>
loading cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... (cached)
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... (cached) yes
checking for working aclocal... found
checking for working autoconf... found
checking for working automake... found
checking for working autoheader... found
checking for working makeinfo... found
checking host system type... i686-pc-cygwin
checking for mawk... (cached) gawk
checking for gcc... (cached) gcc
checking whether the C compiler (gcc ) works... yes
checking whether the C compiler (gcc ) is a cross-compiler... no
checking whether we are using GNU C... (cached) yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for c++... (cached) c++
checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) works... yes
checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) is a cross-compiler... no
checking whether we are using GNU C++... (cached) yes
checking whether c++ accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for a BSD compatible install...
checking whether ln -s works... (cached) yes
checking whether byte ordering is bigendian... (cached) no
checking size of long... (cached) 4 updating cache
creating
creating Makefile
creating config.h
linking
linking
marc>
Works like a dream.. allows for an easy portation, like here of the CD Index client to Win32.
Of course the basic idea of the effort mentioned in this Slashdot article, interchangeability of OpenGL libs is important for FreeBSD as well, and we will try to find an appropriate solution and join discussion. Maybe it will differ in some aspects (our shared lib versioning scheme is different than the one from Linux, so we might not be able to use a solution one to one) but I believe it will not be too far from it away.
We owe much to id Software, without them OpenGL would have not been established widely on Win32. Now they have OpenGL, we have OpenGL and game publishers and other software companies will have it easier than ever to create powerful applications for both platforms.
Further it is a joy to have John Carmack working on the open glx Matrox driver. This guy is dedicated to the subject and certainly not only money driven.
Linux is uniting *NIXes. Solaris and FreeBSD already have the means to run some Linux programs, this makes Linux binaries "almost" a default format.
Well, as a former OS/2 user I have very mixed feeling on this subject, as OS/2 emulation for Win16 was so good that nearly no native app was created, in the end the death for that operating system.
FreeBSD's Linux emulation is very good. So you can run Netscape, RealAudio Player,Myth2 demo, Quake3 under that emulation layer. Like in the case of OS/2, Linux apps might actually run better under FreeBSD in some regards. You even get the same Linux headaches (like clib/glib madness) under the emulation. :-)
However it is just an option and not the native ABI and we will strive to keep porting and developing for FreeBSD. So we have native hardware acclerated XFree86 (2d) and Mesa (3d) versions and apps.
Drop me a mail at 3d@freebsd.org if you need more information.
Web3D? You should have a look here:
http://gel.urstudios.com/
The problem is that it is extremely hard to create universal standards that work well the FIRST time. Usually at least two or more implementations hitting real-world bottlenecks are necessary to define a flexible standard that covers enough variances of the problem space for it to be widely adopted. Plus major issues in allowing it to evolve over time without any preconception of future technologies (witness Fortran 66, 77, 8x, 90, 95, etc). This learning curve puts a serious crimp on progress, especially as the hardware tech evolves faster than software development.
Well spoken. It might interest you folks that one of the main developers behind Direct3d has another 3d API out of the door that is a nice C++ library for Win32 and Unix:
QDraw
It will be used for the above mentioned Web3D format. Works very nice under FreeBSD. Alas I recommend hardware 3d acceleration (I use a TNT) for some of the samples. Backends are OpenGL and our special friend aalib!
For my part I would be already glad, if they would open up their electropaint screen saver sources. :)
Fun aside, please remember that SGI is undergoing a big change. Having a Silicon Graphics workstation has been a bit like having a Mercedes-Benz car. This was very capable (not always the fastest, but always with stunning graphics and that special flair) and expensive hardware, and the software was not what a PC user would call cheap either.
So they need to make the transition from relativly low volume/high priced to high volume/low priced.
Once the demand is there, the software will follow. In some months from now we have really powerful 3d on the free operating systems, people will take it seriously and consider using these platforms for serious work, asking for serious tools. It will happen.
No worry about FreeBSD. The Mesa/Glide combination has been in the ports collection for some time now, and we have the glx from openprojects.net working too, yielding accelerated 3d for Matrox G200/G400 and nvidia RIVA128/128ZX/TNT/TNT2 etc.
Grab it here:
http://www.freebsd.org/~3d/distfiles/glx
The Direct Rendering Infrastructure for the upcoming XFree86 4 release will get ported to FreeBSD too.
And theres is more. Please subscribe to
freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org
to participate in the discussion of this exciting subject or send me an e-mail to 3d@freebsd.org if you have any questions left.
Add to that support for the Matrox G400, NVidia TNT2, ,,
See my comment above, on how to get it. Please use it and help testing!
Bet on it. If the information get freed it is just a matter of time that it will be implemented.
True.
and you've got OpenGL trying to be Mesa compatible now.
That is not the case. What those folks try to achieve is making OpenGL backends interchangable.
So that you get the latest hot 3d app and am able to use it with Mesa3d, or some OpenGL licensed lib from Xi or maybe even SGI without recompiling.
Why don't the SGI guys just beef up OpenGL support in Mesa?
In my opinion the SGI folks are already very generous. For example Brian Paul got access to the OpenGL conformance tests. So far we got an amazing Mesa 3d library. It might become one of the best OpenGL implementations in the future, but this will require our sweat in the first place and not SGIs. Fair game.
BTW calling Mesa OpenGL conformance is not just a matter of putting Mesa through those mentioned tests, the system to be tested is a bit larger and consists also of the card drivers and maybe even cards and screens - I don't know the details, but it is more than just Mesa.
I have read (don't know how true it is) that our digestive system is working only if a certain collection of bacteria settles in our intestines. A new born is supposed to get this bacteria from his mother.
I have no idea, about how individual that inteestine flora is, but it could form another factor to consider that has to be duplicated for a perfect clone.
This idea of Lucas, to recycle the scientific fact that the Mitochondria (the power plants of the cell) have their own DNA and thus might be symbionts to us in his fictive religion was far more annoying to me than the Jar Jar binks character.
I wonder if another fact, that Mitochondric DNA is passed from the mother only to the child, will be used too. This was useful to determine the gentic ancestor of humanity, BTW.
I bought two new cell phones (*) last week, one for my wife and one for me, and was quite surprised to see them equiped with calculator, calendar function and.. games!
It is even possible to play the class snake game from phone to phone via the infrared port.
Wouldn't be surprised if I could program these things myself. I submitted a question on this subject to "Ask Slashdot" but got now entry yet
(*) cell phones: Nokia 6150, a $75 if bought with 2 years phone contract
Obviously people believe in some kind of "the good is in the middle of the distribution" wisdom. My uncle told me about the painting "The last supper" that it appropriatley represented statistics of society (1 saint and 1 criminal among 13 people) and a colleague told me the story that a former company he worked for always discarded bids at the statistical extremes without evaluation.
(..) to pick from people who read an "Average" amount of Slashdot a day (weeding out occasional readers and obsessive overreaders)
I suspected that the login procedure on Slashdot (and other sites) could be used to generate digital traces of a readers activity. Not unproblematic.
Don't forget the possibility that their code might suck incredibly and is not suitable for publication.
If their present cross plattform base libraries/graphical user interface libraries -this is known as StarView library- has not evolved quite a lot from the stuff they had in 1994, than I am not surprised they don't release it. I know that stuff, something for IOCCC connaisseurs.
Initial Mozilla code was clean compared to the StarView mess. Sorry to be that harsh, I was involved in porting attempts of that cr.. legacy software to MS VC++ 5 and 6 and got some very er.. professional work days due to it.
I'd rather convert million LOC FORTRAN libs to C++.
Are you joking?
This completely against my perceiption. I know companies using old Wordperfect, but never saw anyone using StarOffice. The only folks using StarOffice I know are some people from university. I doubt if any Microsoft competitor holds more than a 10% market share in Germany for word processors and spread sheets.
and this is very attractive, as German companies are very unsatisfied with MS and more likely to switch than their US couterparts.
The only differenece between Germany and US is probably that Germans are more likely to know the StarOffice product. The sad reality is people using MS Office at work, getting it bundled with new PCs or simply pirating it.
At least I, as a (unvoluntary) user/developer of the old StarView library source code, am very curious to see what StarDivision uses in its latest release. Alas that old stuff (from 1992-94) is so wicked that I am quite sure (otherwise Sun is in trouble) they changed their library design considerably.
Any solution to this problem?
I am not sure if it is too much, if I could delete it myself but how about allowing me to flag it for deletion by some moderator - so two folks are involved?
What bit me was, that the _declspec attributes vanished, when linking several libs to a big lib, so I had to link the big lib from the object files (that constitute the smaller libs) directly.
Thanks!