[NTLK] Restarting Newton development?!

[Matthias Melcher]

I did already ported newt/0 to 64 bit. It's a bit clunky and uses lookup tables, that fill up eventually, but it's good enoigh to use newt/0 to compile something or even run a short live app.

Simon Bell's Framework is really fantastic. I probably read through pretty much the whole thing by now, an I believe that he can convert ARM to C++ code on the fly by now, making him the first human decompiler. He did use some Apple specifics in his implementation, some Objective C, and even some assembler, which would need to be brought into common C++, but his code has become a NewtonOS reference Manual for me.

I had not seem Wlater Smith's (TEH Walter Smith) code online until now. That is pretty awesome, too. I wonder if he has the source code to the entire NewtonOS 2.2 somewhere on an old Exabyte Tape ;-) 8-D


> On Aug 2, 2018, at 20:26, Steven Frank <stevenf at panic.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Aug 1, 2018, at 10:20 PM, Forrest <newton_phoenix at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Admittedly not knowing all that much about programming (I worked with BASIC and 6502 machine language 35 years ago), I had a thought when I read the comment about computers being so much more powerful now.
>> 
>> I postulate this: would it be easier to run said software on an older 32-bit Mac, develop much of it there, and then port it over/upgrade it to 64 bit when the proper time/necessity arises?
> 
> Possibly, but I think the benefits of bringing it up to 64-bit would be so much greater that it'd be worth tackling early.  That way if/when new developers want to contribute, they don't need to acquire / keep around legacy Mac hardware to do so.
> 
> I wonder if it would be as simple as just recompiling with 64-bit types, and having effectively a 64-bit NewtonScript runtime, since we're (I think?) targeting modern architectures rather than actual Newton hardware.  Of course that wouldn't be able to run any existing NewtonScript apps built for 32-bit without recompilation (I think?), which would include all the NewtonScript in the Newton ROMs.  :-I  Could we just ignore/mask out the upper 32-bits??
> 
> I have a lot to learn about NewtonScript... 
> 
> Steven
> 
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