Luc Beaudoin <lucb@tundra.com> writes:
> Date: Wed, 02 Oct 1996 14:41:32 -0800
> Organization: Tundra Semiconductor Corporation
>
> I don't get tired of asking this FAQ because I want to push the poplog
> developers to realise that Pop-11 could win thousands of converts if
> it was readily and easily available on PCs. Linux is a step in the
> right direction (since it can work with PCs), but let's face it: most
> people don't run UNIX on their PCs.
>
> So when will Poplog (or at least Pop-11) be available to run under
> Windows? I've heard it said quite frequently that it's easy to port
> Pop to a new OS...
My understanding is that it has been ported, though without
graphics, and that's a non-trivial addition.
Making Poplog work with the X window system (including allowing
other people's widget sets to be imported) took about two years of
work by several people, if I remember correctly.
Not all of that would need to be repeated but from what I've heard
the PC windowing and graphics environment is totally unlike X, which
is at least roughly consistent across most unix platforms and VMS.
Another problem is a commercial difficulty, not a marketing one.
The main commercial market for Poplog hitherto has been on
relatively expensive machines, whose owners are willing to pay a
significant price for Poplog, and a significant annual maintenance
fee, for support and updates.
PC owners are typically NOT willing to pay nearly so much. Thus for
the PC version to be a commercial proposition requires a much larger
number of customers, and it could kill the other market.
So the issue of whether to produce a PC version of Poplog or not is
not a simple one, and it's not for lack of interest or concern that
it is not done.
I am not defending any particular decision, merely pointing out that
the issues may be more complex than some users suppose.
I suppose that if someone could show that there were 100,000 users
each willing to pay 500 pounds, or 500,000 users willing to pay 200
pounds, for PC poplog in the next couple of years, a version of PC
poplog would appear pretty soon.
Aaron
--
--
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-121-414-4775 (Sec 3711) Fax: +44-121-414-4281
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