Re: [NTLK] A Newton Replacement: facts

From: R. Dylan Stewart (rxs015500_at_utdallas.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 28 2003 - 06:57:29 PST


On 2003-10-27 at 20:07:28, DJ Vollkasko wrote:
> Hmh, I remember having read a paper at Philz' website where Apple folks
> went on about how extremely portable their NOS is, etc. - and then read
the
> same in "Why Apple killed the Newton".
>
> So - how portable is "portable", and has anybody in recorded history ever
> put NOS on something different (and I'm NOT asking about putting it on a
> peanut butter sandwich!).

Well, as far as getting the UI and the vast majority of software to run on
some different hardware, all that you would have to write is a NewtonScript
interpreter (though much of the really useful stuff is written in a form of
C). It would be nice to have similar hardware (particularly with regards to
screen size), but there are ways to work around that sort of limitation.
For instance, use a Palm's hardware buttons to scroll the physical screen
around a larger virtual screen. Not a perfect solution, but better than
dropping some data because it was drawn off-screen. The real shortcoming of
that solution is that it would miss the lower-level stuff such as the HWR
(unless someone happens to have a nice open-source HWR engine lying around)
entirely, so it's probably unacceptable to most people.

It would be better to write a NewtonScript interpreter with a sort of Newton
emulator to execute the lower-level code, but at that point, it would
probably be easier to just emulate the hardware and run the Newton's own ROM
interpreter. The disadvantage to that is a general lack of knowledge of the
inner workings of the Newton.

Now, if you could find the cooler parts of the ROM (such as the HWR) and
somehow extract them such that they could be individually emulated, you
might be able to pull it off with an interpreter and a virtual machine as
long as you were willing to deal with other devices lack of FLASH, PCMCIA
slots, and other hardware shortcomings.

The best solution would probably be to write a Newton-like layer on top of
an existing OS. Make an API that has stuff like soups and whatever else
people like about the Newton and then standardize it across multiple
platforms. Low-level programs would have to be compiled for each target
platform, but scripted stuff should be able to operate normally with a few
small changes in the packaging to account for the differences between OS
file types. You wouldn't have the Newton's HWR, but it would be much faster
to develop the API if it used parts of the pre-existing OS such as *shudder*
Graffiti.

In all seriousness, Graffiti wasn't that bad of an idea. It enabled Palm to
put much slower (and therefore cheaper and less power-hungry) processors
into their devices. Without something like Graffiti at that point, I don't
think that PDAs would have been very popular at all because people would
have constant trouble using them for anything. Full screen HWR is nice, but
it gobbles processing power like no other (except, perhaps speech
recognition).

Back to that last idea, make an API that incorporates as much of the host OS
as possible. On PocketPCs, have it use their HWR software; on Palms, have
it use Graffiti; on a Zaurus, use the keyboard; etc. Implement whatever it
needs to make it more Newton-like, but don't try to make it a Newton. The
Newton isn't perfect, it's just better than whatever else is being offered.

We can't depend on other people to give us what we want; every current PDA
manufacturer is trying to be the next Palm. I only see two choices: either
we stick with our rapidly decaying hardware until it dies or we find a way
to make other solutions more acceptable. Emulating the Newton in its
entirety isn't practical at this point, porting the OS is impossible because
we don't have the source, so we are left with making other, more current
offerings more Newton-like. Doing that is left as an exercise to the
reader.

> Hungrily yours,
>
> DJV.

 Dylan Stewart AC5ZH

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