Re: XY on a Mac

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≪Just to be clear: you're saying that VPC won't run on OSX 10.4 and
later? ≫
I'm not sure that VPC won't run under OSX 10.4. I am sure that dealers
will try to sell you Parallels rather than VPC once they find out you've
got OSX 10.4 or later. There was a watershed between 10.3.9 and 10.4--a
number of apps are definitely coded for one or the other. I did try to
install a few apps designed for 10.4 on my 10.3.9 system, and they would
not run. That's not so say that a 10.3.9 VPC won't run in 10.4--only
that I have no information on this.
Almost any application can be "ported" to run in OS X (10.3.9 or 10.4,
or even OS 9). There is information (and even forums) about how to do
this on the web. Ultimately, I think the future of XY is to move away
from patching up increasingly unwilling Windows versions with cludges,
and to "port" XY to run in Linux or OSX.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but anyone running Windows NT4 or later is
already running a virtual DOS machine anyway.
The advantage of porting XY to run in OSX (or Linux) is, first, that it
dispenses with the simulation layer (DOS emulation, virtual DOS machine,
 virtual Windows/Parallels) with all of their attendant difficulties.
And second, that it makes full use of the native OS and all of its RAM.
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, 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. If I lived near Robert or Carl, I'd volunteer
my Mac for testing. As it is, I will volunteer to surf around this week
and next and try to find an example of a DOS program successfully ported
to OSX, as a sample.
After that, if we pay obeisance to our XY gurus, maybe they would deign
to take a look at whether this is feasible.