Subj : squish
To   : Bob Ackley
From : andrew clarke
Date : Tue May 23 2006 06:24 pm

Sun 2006-05-21 08:06, Bob Ackley (1:2905/3) wrote to Alan Ianson:

 AI>> I'm hoping one day Squish can be updated but we'll have to see.
 AI>> The Win32 & linux versions could likely be updated but it will be a
 AI>> challenge to find devs who have the tools to compile new DOS & OS/2
 AI>> executibles.

 BA> If people would write (only) ANSI standard code this wouldn't be
 BA> an issue as any compiler that conforms to ANSI standards (and 
 BA> AFAIK most do) on any OS would work just fine.

You make it sound so easy!  The Squish and Maximus code dates back to the early 
1990s.  It's a bit unrealistic to expect 15 year old DOS-based code to be 
ANSI/ISO C standard conformant.  If they were to be rewritten from scratch I 
suspect this would not be much of a problem, although they would probably be 
rewritten in C++ or Python now.

In any case, there are some things you can't do solely with ANSI/ISO C/C++, eg.

- findfirst/findnext (eg. Squish processing *.PKT and *.pkt), although you can 
do this with less-portable POSIX calls 

- serial port I/O (OS dependant) (required for Maximus)

- enhanced text mode display (required for Maximus but not Squish) (OS 
dependant - requires Curses, OS/2 Vio* or Win32 console subsystem calls)

- probably a few other things that don't spring to mind

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