Re: Importance of "W" for Mac68/TOS

[Petr Stehlik <stehlik@cas3.zlin.vutbr.cz>]

On Fri, 21 Nov 1997, Eonic Man wrote:

> I agree that GEM has quite a library of software available for it when it
> comes to the Atari.  The benefit of W is that it is a Unix oriented windowing
> system for MiNT.  That alone make quite a statement.  This means that off the
> bat it supports long file names, and all of the Unix variety of software out

IMHO W does not support anything more than plain MiNT console does (except for 
the few W applications). In your words, you need not W for running all of the
Unix variety of software out there.

> Atari or Mac 68k systems that deal with Unix.  On a Falcon, we are talking
> about a system similar to the NeXT that would support the DSP for audio
> engineering.  For student; a cut down version of X to understand Unix.  For

W is not a cut down version of X. It does not help to understand Unix, imho.

> Atarians, another environment for full support of long file names that is
> completely MiNT aware for command line and GUI control (more like AmigaDOS). 

and who will write all the thousand of GEM applications we use in MiNTOS?
It's much easier to install Linux than writting applications for W under MiNT.
Actually MiNT+W-GEM is quite similar to Linux, but Linux has proper memory 
management, real X11R6 (with color support) etc. Or do you think MiNT+GEM+W?

> Not a bad thing.  A system like NeXT with out the memory requirements.  It
> would be very nice once full color support is added.

:-) are all applications for NeXT available with source code? If not, I can't
see you reasons for comparing MiNT+W on a Falcon with NeXT...

BTW, I don't want to be just negative, so there's one positive idea: if someone
port W to Windows32, it becomes interesting to write applications for W (I would
write one then). One common GUI for Linux, ix86 and m68k machines - that would
be something!

Petr
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