From: Alexander Schreiber (als_at_thangorodrim.de)
Date: Mon Nov 24 2003 - 22:28:52 PST
Hi!
I just found an interesting bit of Newton history in the comp.lang.lisp
newsgroup:
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Message-ID: <Mdhvb.14557$Lo1.5520_at_newssvr29.news.prodigy.com>
From: mikel <mikel_at_evins.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Relationship of Lisp and Dylan
Two versions of NewtonOS were developed in which everything above the
kernel was written in Dylan, except for the graphics primitives. The
first version used Skia (which later evolved into the now-abandoned
graphics libraries called QuickDraw GX), but there were two problems
with Skia: one, it was way too big and complicated, and two, it used its
own GC scheme that interacted in unfriendly ways with the Dylan GC.
That original OS was scrapped for office-political reasons that sound
stupid when repeated, but that's the way things happen sometimes. The
second one was written by a small group of Lisp programmers to see what
Dylan could do on Newton. Turned out it could do a lot--there were some
very cool ideas in there--but it wanted about 640K versus the 200 or
300K the C++ version wanted, and Apple was really trying to keep costs
down every way it could, including by limiting the required memory.
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Regards,
Alex.
-- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison -- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
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