Re: [NTLK] NIE v3

On 13. Dec, 2008, at 07:55 , Tony Kan wrote:

> Bear with me, while I think aloud:
> 1.. If the objective is to rewrite NIE to allow binary transfers
> and implement
> SSL; and

Binary transfers are already possible.

> 2.. Not to create a new web browser; then
> Is there enough documentation available to create a "drop-in"
> replacement for
> NIE so that all extant software that currently relies on it such as
> Courier to
> continue running?

That's at least from my perspective a pretty clear "no" - There are
two ways to implement SSL on the Newton, which both have problems:

- subclassing the NIE implemenation C++ classes: Requires quite heavy
reverse engineering, more difficult than the regular way to reverse
engineer on the Newton because there is no debug information in the
NIE packages.
- implementing a new TCP/IP stack: Requires interfacing with the PPP
or Ethernet physical layers, with similar issues like the NIE
subclassing, neither layer is documented.

Both solutions would allow existing applications to use SSL with
minimal modification. It is however also possible to provide a
NewtonScript implementation of SSL, but that requires that
applications are modified quite heavily. You could compare it to
replacing the BSD socket interface with the Windows Socket API.

I would go for the NIE subclassing, I've done something like that
with the non-functional "Serial Endpoint" hack here: http://40hz.org/
wiki/index.php/Experiments

Eckhart

Eckhart

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Received on Sun Dec 14 14:11:11 2008