Rewriting for Linux?

[Albert Cahalan]

On 4/2/07, Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Albert Cahalan wrote:
> > For resizable conversion, you might use the GTK library. This would
> > let you make the program able to smoothly adapt to any screen size.
> > With GTK you lay out the screen in terms of geometrical divisions.
> > For example, you specify that an image gets the upper half of the
> > display and other stuff gets the bottom half. Then you subdivide
> > that "other stuff" area so that the bottom part is buttons and the
> > upper part is text. Then you subdivide the buttons area for the
> > individual buttons.
>
> Note that we are _not_ using the GTK+ library for widgets; we're drawing
> our own using HippoCanvas, which is presently woefully underdocumented.

Dear my.

> The best thing to do, I believe, is to go backwards and try and grok one
> of the existing activities, instead of going forwards and attempting to
> learn all the underlying technologies before writing code.

No, because that would require learning a whole new language.
Then he'd have to pick through undocumented and unfinished
code in this strange language.

Probably SDL on a regular desktop is the easiest way to start.
Hopefully the XO oddities will be documented or eliminated by
the time he has his app working on Linux.

Remember, this is a DOS app. DOS apps cast between pointers
and short. DOS apps peek into the BIOS keyboard buffer.
DOS apps hold filenames in buffers with 11 to 13 bytes.
Unless he's really fast or his DOS code is unusually clean, you
have plenty of time to document HippoCanvas and all the DBUS stuff.