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On Sep 2, 2006, at 16.14, Steven Frank wrote:
> Also there is a potential problem with aiming for a cross-platform
> syncing solution.
> First of all, cross-platform applications are harder to develop, and
> it's going to be harder to find a developer with the necessary
> proficiency and resources.
True.
> Second of all, with cross-platform, you tend to end up with a program
> that's good-but-not-great on all the platforms it runs on.
False. I point you to VLC, MPlayer, MythTV, OpenOffice, SNES9x, MAME,
and several others.
> By way of example, the best possible outcome for the Mac side would
> probably be an iSync plugin. This is, by definition, not cross-
> platform. Similarly, on Windows, you would want Outlook
> integration. Outlook doesn't exist on the Mac, and even if it did,
> their plug-ins would not be interchangeable.
This is the biggest problem. In this case, I'd say that there should
be separate projects. Perhaps, say, a libnewt, which handles
communication with the Newton. An iSync Plugin could be built around
that, as well as a modern Newton syncing app for Windows, and even
Linux. libnewt would have to be an OSS project, everything else
doesn't really need to be.
For an example of this kind of system, I point to libgaim, which
handles multi-protocol IM agents, on top of which gAIM, XFire, and
AdiumX have been built.
> So, I'm not sure if I'm advocating picking one platform, or having
> two separate projects, but beware the potential cross-platform
> albatross...
You're right, about cross-platform being a problem (the Matroska
project is a good example), but if the system is broken up into
several projects, it should be feasible. Just make one reliable
communication library, document it well, and keep it Open Source.
Then we might have some luck.
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