jlc@sofluc.demon.co.uk (Jonathan) writes:
> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 13:05:40 +0000
> Organization: SofLuc Ltd
>
> 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.
> >
>
> I don't get a chance to read this group regularly, so I may have
> missed a followup. But this question is significant for me, too.
>
> More particularly, I know that there is work on a Windows NT
> version, with the possibility of a beta release some time in 96.
>
> I'm currently deciding between upgrading to Windows NT or Windows 95
> as my main development OS where I work. I do most of my work in
> C++ on PCs, but like to do some prototyping and one-off work in a more
> suitable language. Currently I use Franz Allegro CL/PC (a good
> implementation of Common Lisp). Franz have just sent me their
> latest upgrade offer (actually 5 copies of it - they could save
> themselves a lot of postage if they pruned their mailing lists :-).
>
> I have to respond by end of December, so I'll almost certainly
> get two licences from them.
>
> I've been tempted to get a commercial Linux licence instead but,
> on balance, it just wouldn't make sense to give myself the extra
> work of running a Linux system. If I had a definite release date
> for Poplog on NT, which I had confidence in, then maybe I could
> wait for that instead.
>
> 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?
But it's very hard to predict these things.
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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