Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!yale.edu!jvnc.net!
moesun.edu.tw!ccds3.ntu.edu.tw!ccds2.cc.ntu.edu.tw!kcsu
From: kc...@ccds2.cc.ntu.edu.tw (Kuo-Chun Su)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: More information about Coherent 4.0 !
Message-ID: <1992May27.071105.23737@ccds3.ntu.edu.tw>
Date: 27 May 92 07:11:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: ccds3.1992May27.071105.23737
Sender: use...@ccds3.ntu.edu.tw (USENET PROXY ACCOUNT)
Organization: NTUTaiwan
Lines: 23
Nntp-Posting-Host: ccds2
Dear All,
I post some messages about the possibility of X running on the new
version of Coherent. Someone mentioned that there must at least be some
socket support to build the TCP/IP and X. I don't know quite about that
since I am new to networking and X. But I have to use X because my
professor wants me to write a better user interface in X for my research.
So my question is : How soon will the socket be supported and X be ported
to Coherent ? I know that some people in Mark Williams are doing some
simple GUI, but I hope that they can spend some effort in porting X because
it is more standardized. I guess the reason why Coherent breaks the 64K
limit is to make it more compatible to UNIX, so why not port X to make it
more compatible to standard graphics programming. I don't want any network
support, what I want is just to do some portable graphics programming.
Will any technician in Mark Williams answer the above for me ?
Thanks in advance !
Sincerely Yours
Kuo-Chun Su
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!klaava!torvalds
From: torv...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: More information about Coherent 4.0 !
Message-ID: <1992May27.184022.15011@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 27 May 92 18:40:22 GMT
References: <1992May27.071105.23737@ccds3.ntu.edu.tw>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 58
In article <1992May27.0...@ccds3.ntu.edu.tw>
kc...@ccds2.cc.ntu.edu.tw (Kuo-Chun Su) writes:
>
> I post some messages about the possibility of X running on the new
> version of Coherent. Someone mentioned that there must at least be some
> socket support to build the TCP/IP and X.
You also need some way to get to the screen memory and the IO ports from
user space: the standard sysv thing to use seems to be mmap on /dev/mem,
and I don't know if coh386 will support that kind of thing. The
socket-support doesn't have to be complete, and you don't need TCP/IP,
although it would be nice to have anyway.
Additionally, virtual memory is almost a must for X, or you have to have
at least 16MB of memory if you want to do some real programming. At
least 4.0 won't have this, according to the messages floating around.
Additionally, shared libraries are /very/ practical to keep binary sizes
down, or most X binaries will be around 500kB, which essentially fills
up your harddisk very quickly. You also need select() etc, but maybe
coherent already has this?
> I don't know quite about that
> since I am new to networking and X. But I have to use X because my
> professor wants me to write a better user interface in X for my research.
> So my question is : How soon will the socket be supported and X be ported
> to Coherent ?
If you want X11r5 now, go for linux: it's free (so far the only free X11
platform I beleive), so you can't lose (unless you don't backup). Try
it out (but be prepared to work a bit on setting it up). Linux has all
the above features, and is pretty compatible with both BSD and SYSVr4 on
the user level (ie most GNU programs compile out-of-the-box or close).
Read comp.os.linux and ftp to tsx-11.mit.edu to get additional info.
> I know that some people in Mark Williams are doing some
> simple GUI, but I hope that they can spend some effort in porting X because
> it is more standardized.
I assume they are working on MGR: it's fast and small, but doesn't do
everything X does. Without virtual memory it's the way to go though: it
should run perfectly well on a 4MB 386. Minix has MGR, although the
problem seems to be that there aren't that many programs for it (there
is also a port of MGR to linux, but I haven't tested it out personally
yet).
MGR is lean and mean: there are people who prefer it to X due to speed,
even on "real" unix machines. But it isn't exactly well-supported.
> I guess the reason why Coherent breaks the 64K
> limit is to make it more compatible to UNIX, so why not port X to make it
> more compatible to standard graphics programming. I don't want any network
> support, what I want is just to do some portable graphics programming.
Well, the 64kB limit is the main problem for most programs, but much
more is needed for X. I assume coherent will get X support eventually:
it's still the one thing most people want (so that they can show off to
their friends who are running windows :). The question is when?
Linus