Re: Xy4 and U2 on a 286

[Robert Holmgren holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to note from Peregrine Thu, 29 Jun 2000 17:53:50 EDT

> And on a related subject, is it possible to carve out or excise the
> sections I don't need, such as the OS/2-specific programming? Or would I be
> playing with fire to try such a thing?

Sure, it's possible. But it would not be easy unless you were familiar with
the routines; and furthermore the OS/2 component takes up no more than 1Kb of
actual resident memory, probably only 500 bytes or so. Plus we're moving very
much in the direction of cross-platform compatibility, which means: you
issue one command, e.g. "clip", under *any* operating system, and U2
will handle the branching to the code specific to your machine's OS.
Probably at least half the time the code for various OSes will all be
bundled in a single frame; other times, frame "clip" will branch to "clipw"
for Windows, "clipo" for OS/2, "clipu" for Linux/AIX/Sparc/*nix, etc. And
the physical organization of U2 will probably keep all the "clip" frames
together in one place -- rather than, say, keeping all the Windows-specific
frames in one section, the OS/2 frames in another (easily deleted) section,
etc. It's just easier for the developers to think of it that way.

Anyway, forget about it. There is no drag on your machine, no "bloat" to be
concerned about. Remember: XYWWWEB.U2 is *never* loaded verbatim into
memory or into a window. All that XyWrite does is make a pithy Index of the
frame locations within the file, and then, when a frame is called, XyWrite
performs an external lookup into file XYWWWEB.U2 at the referenced byte
location -- and boom, executes the code it finds there. So the pithy Index
is in memory (about 8Kb altogether), and that's the extent of it.
An insignificant burden.

Unless Carl has already answered this, lemme ask: how much extra time is the
U2 "index" taking to load? I presume you are referring here to the
XYWWWEB.INF file? Yes, there will always be a slightly longer pause than
under the system we used before v085, because the
INFormational frames, indices, tables, etc, have been removed from U2 itself
and placed in a separate text file (XYWWWEB.INF), precisely in order to keep
XYWWWEB.U2 slim and trim, and to loosen our inhibitions about putting
extraneous material into the informational frames. The whole organism
is really much more flexible now. But the system needs to CAll the INF file
into a window, read it, do a search for the information you've requested,
format and display it. All of which takes a bit more time than under the old
system -- I imagine quite noticeable on a 286 (a 1984 chip, after all), but
not really apparent on a modern computer. Forget about it.



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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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