Re: XY on a Mac

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

> I'm guessing here, that what "porting" amounts to in practice is
> writing XPL code and creating an API (application programming
> interface). This is beyond me, . . . .
sadly, it's beyond anyone else, too. For speed, XyWrite is mostly
written in low-level assembly language, nearly the most primitive
level on which computer instructions can be written. Very little is
written like this today as it's simply too difficult. Assuming you
had XyWrite's source code, which I don't think anybody on this list
does, you would have to be a genius-level programmer and you would
have to have a good year or two ahead of you.
Anyone who actually wanted to bring XyWrite to another platform today
would probably discard all the old coding and reverse engineer the
program. I imagine that would take less time than re-coding. That
said, now that Macs are on Intel, perhaps _some_ of the
assembly-language code would still be usable?
But there wouldn't be any point in revising XyWrite today except in a
higher level language, because that's the only way it could be
portable to multiple platforms present and future. The loss in speed
through use of a higher level language would presumably compensated
for by the increased speed of today's computers.
> but I should think not unfamiliar ground for Carl and Robert. It
> will require someone with intimate knowledge of XY source code and
> access to a Mac.