Re: [MiNT] Russian country code

[Dima Sobolev <avtandil33@gmail.com>]

This is a forwarded message
From: Alan Hourihane <alanh@fairlite.co.uk>
To: Dima Sobolev <avtandil33@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, January 12, 2013, 7:04:15 PM
Subject: Russian country code

===8<==============Original message text===============
Hi Dima,

Can you post this to the list, as I don't want to have private 
discussions. I would like to keep this open so everyone gets a chance to 
respond.

Many thanks.

Alan.

On 01/12/13 14:18, Dima Sobolev wrote:
> Hello Alan,
>
> Vincent advised me to apply to you regarding Russian country code.
>
>> On 01/09/13 10:24, Vincent Rivi�re wrote:
>>> On 03/01/2013 21:32, Vincent Rivi�re wrote:
>>>> In EmuTOS:
>>>> - Revert my recent changes to match FreeMiNT, and restore the old EmuTOS
>>>> country codes for Greece and Russia
>>>>
>>>> In FreeMiNT:
>>>> Use the EmuTOS country codes. This means
>>>> - For Greece, use 18 (instead of 31)
>>>> - For Russia, use 19 (instead of 32)
>>>> And also, define other country codes for:
>>>> - Lituania (currently 18 in FreeMiNT)
>>>> - Latvia (currently 19 in FreeMiNT)
>>> No veto against the above solution?
>>> If that's OK, I will provide a patch.
>>>
>> Well, I think I might have to.
> I  was the one who 'created' Russian TOS and first owner of real Atari
> ST with Russian TOS programmed on a chip.
>
> And  several  years  ago I was invited to EMUTOS/ACP to make localized
> version  of  it  and  you  can  see  -  now there is Russian EMUTOS in
> distribution package.
>
> In  the  Atari-times Russian screen and keyboard drivers were realized
> by  LVA-accessory and most of that time applications were supporting
> this,  so  we  could  now to set this layout as a standard one to keep
> backward  compatibility.  Atari  was  very  popular  in  Russia  among
> musicians  and  gamers,  so  if  we  have new hardware it can give big
> Atari resurrection in Russian speaking countries.
>
> As  you  know, the aim of ACP was to create new Atari hardware which is
> able  to  run  all  previous  applications,  that's why I followed the
> standard  with  EMUTOS as well. But after we used another country code
> (which  was by mistake included into my first 2004 version of Russian
> TOS)  we found that some applications and demos are crashing with that
> TOS. That was corrected in 2010 edition of Russian TOS and implemented
> in EMUTOS as well.
>
>> I think there's more chance of breaking existing code that's been long
>> standing in XaAES, than EmuTOS.
>>
>> It's only come to light because there's probably more people testing
>> EmuTOS snapshots in these countries than those testing XaAES snapshots
>> in these countries.
>>
>> How many people are affected in EmuTOS ?
> As  we  had  before  country  codes  from  0  to  16  taken from Atari
> Compendium  as  a  most  official  source,  while working with EMUTOS,
> people  added  another  3  country codes for countries which are really
> showing activity in the Atari world.
>
> I didn't check with XaAES yet, but for MiNT I see the country code file
> which  was  created  by Mr. Kokoszkiewicz by unknown algorithm - seems
> that   he  just  scroll  the  world  map  and  choose  some  countries
> independent  on  their real role on Atari scene. And this file was
> not in distribution package of the original MiNT 1.12 .
>
> That's why for my opinion we should estimate code 19 as a standard for
> Russia and of course it should be the same in EMUTOS, MiNT and XaAES
> especially taking into account that Lituania and Latvia have no any
> visible activity in Atari world and TOS/EMUTOS/MiNT/XaAES for those
> countries was never exist, we can just swap code for those two with
> Greek/Russian code.
>
> We  don't  know  about  future development, maybe country code will be
> more involved into the system so better to synchronize it now.
>
> What do you think about this ?
>
>> Alan.
>
> Best regards,
>   Dima                          mailto:avtandil33@gmail.com
>