In article <49lip3$1o3@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk>,
A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) wrote:
>jlc@sofluc.demon.co.uk (Jonathan) writes:
>
>> In article <48chig$r7h@rockall.cc.strath.ac.uk>,
>> Iain McKay <iainm> wrote:
>>
>> >I was wondering if anyone knew when a version of pop11
>> >for MS-Windows would be ready.
>> >
>>
>> More particularly, I know that there is work on a Windows NT
>> version, with the possibility of a beta release some time in 96.
>>
>> Of course, I'd much rather hear nothing than a forecasted date
>> that cannot be realised.
>>
>> Jonathan
>
>My guess is you will hear nothing. A full port including graphics,
>control panels, etc. is bound to be a huge amount of work. On the
>other hand, I suspect they could release a purely textual Pop-11
>right now.
>
>The main obstacle, I would guess, is that the typical price of PC
>software packages is so low that Poplog on a PC would have to
>seriously undercut all other versions of Poplog (Vax, Sun, HPPA,
>SGI, DEC Alpha, etc.) and this might hit ISL very hard, because
>there's little chance of their selling thousands of copies in order
>to make up for the low price?
>
I don't think the price would be the obstacle. Franz seem to manage
selling for both kinds of platforms. My guess would be that the main
factor is the cost of porting to NT. I do not believe SPARC poplog
users will throw away their SPARCs, Alphas etc. and buy PCs - or, if
they will, then they are going to do it anyway, and with no NT poplog
you've lost them completely.
But I think it would be a mistake (not a fatal mistake - but a
mistake nevertheless) to wait until all the bells and whistles are
ported. After all, it is aiming at a moving target.
IMHO, the minimum needed for a release would be textual pop-11;
an edit window with a mode accepting the main industry standard
key sequences for things like cut, copy, paste, save; limited
mouse support (for marking regions of text); and a foreign
function interface so that users always have the option of working
around deficiencies, linking in existing code etc. This would also
let you sell the other poplog compilers (lisp, prolog etc.)
Price this reasonably low (a few hundred pounds) with a corresponding
low level of support. I'm not suggesting a huge advertising campaign -
just let it be available as soon as it is actually usable. If it
started selling in any reasonable volume, the revenue would pay for
further development. If not, you haven't really lost anything if you
plan for a full NT port eventually. You can always increase the price
gradually as more stuff gets ported.
Jonathan Cunningham
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