From: Jim Witte (jswitte_at_bloomington.in.us)
Date: Thu Sep 09 2004 - 12:12:08 PDT
> I think one of the problems with the DCL is that it's not been released
> under one of the "recognized" opensource licenses, but it's own
> licence.
> I think other developers are going to be more likely to use
> it/contribute to it if it's license was a bit more standard (ie, either
> under the GPL, LGPL or BSD license). I'm not even certain that the
I'm not so sure. I don't remember what the KRL is and is not
compatible with (haven't checked lately), but I seriously doubt that
the lack of a "standard" license is going to stop a developer form
working on the project. Now, you might be right when it comes to
getting it on SorceForge or something - I don't know how many people
scour projects to work on based on say BSD.
Notice I didn't say, "a particular license is going to stop a
developer" Because Paul has stated in the past, and I tend to agree
with him in part, been averse to working with GPL, and certainly won't
release under GPL unless he absolutely has to (meaning existing
software project and can't get it relicensed) But I don't really know
what I'm talking about here - he does.
> rather odd - not only was it in two languages it also mandated such
> things as coding style.
You can read the thing at
http://www.kallisys.org/reflexive/reflexive.html As far as I understand
it (not having read it all *that* closely, meaning taking 20 minutes to
do so without my brain on fast mode), it only really mandates that you
document things internally in a clear and concise manner, give
variables meaningful names (except for counters - so you can say
for(i=0;i<10;i++) but can't say 'x[model[i].ndv][np] =
(float)(stp*z[2]+(1.0-stp)*y[model[i].ndv][1]);' (this is an *actual*
line out of a program I have that I'll port some day - it solves
econometric models, and was written back in the dark ages when
variables couldn't be longer than 5-8 characters..
> Another problem with the DCL is, as you say, the lack of documentation.
> I have a pile of code sitting there, that I know little about with
> little help on learning how to use it.
Well, there *is* documentation. In the code - about 30-40% of it is
doc.
I think what would help is a set of example/'tutorial' projects. Say
the following sequence (this is for MacOSX because that's what I use,
but could be applied to any platform):
1. Open up the serial port, connect to the dock, then allow
disconnection. DON'T do anything other than serial, DON'T have
anything "useful" done, other than open a TDCLFullDockLink object.
2. Same thing, just with Appletalk, TCPIP, and Rendezvous enabled.
3. Connect, then allow a keyboard link, or just type some string in
directly.
4. Use the DCL to get a particular frame on the Newton
> By the time I've read the through
> the source and come to understand it enough to use it, there's a good
> chance that I could have just written what ever functionality I needed
> (in my case, I wanted an nsof -> XML convertor, which has so far been
> reasonbly easy to implement in python).
>
> Another problem with the DCL is that it's just not done in a very
> linuxy
> manner - it seems to be more orientated towards OS/X. Besides a
> directory layout that screams of OS/Xness,
Not exactly sure *what* that means, not being a UNIX geek myself
(other than perhaps the fact that it's actually organized, and doesn't
have a whole bunch of 3-4 character names - sorry, I don't like that
part of legacy *NIX) Other than OS/X of course, where you can
basically avoid being a UNIX geek as much as you like - although I
prefer terminal CVS to MacCVSX..
> it doesn't appear to folow the usual configure/make/make install way
> of building stuff on
> Linux/*BSD, which is where most open source developers live. As it
> looks
> like there are builds of it for linux it must be possible to build, but
> again the lack of documentation kicks in and makes the DCL unusable.
True. Any uber linux geeks who want to help rearrange it or maybe
even port Delivery or Escale?
Jim
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