| 1 | From: mdw@excessus.ebi.ac.uk (Mark Wooding) |
| 2 | Subject: Re: E is for Enlightenment |
| 3 | Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 00:00:00 GMT |
| 4 | Message-ID: <slrn69jenb.agt.mdw@excessus.ebi.ac.uk> |
| 5 | References: <slrn69a3bm.eea.mdw@excessus.ebi.ac.uk> |
| 6 | Organization: MRC Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre |
| 7 | Reply-To: mdw@ebi.ac.uk |
| 8 | Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.programmer |
| 9 | |
| 10 | |
| 11 | |
| 12 | [This isn't really a follow-up to anyone in particular, although it |
| 13 | belongs in the same thread.] |
| 14 | |
| 15 | |
| 16 | I'm extremely heartened by the interest people have shown. I've even |
| 17 | had people throwing themselves at me and trying to persuade me not to do |
| 18 | this. This puzzled me. That's not really the point. Thanks to |
| 19 | everyone. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | I ought to try to explain in more detail how the Straylight Source |
| 22 | Release (or SSR) is going to work. There's nothing to see yet. |
| 23 | Sources, when they appear, will be available by anonymous FTP from |
| 24 | odie.barnet.ac.uk, in the directory /pub/Acorn/straylight. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | The SSR will appear one chunk at a time, hopefully in a sensible order |
| 27 | (so that you don't need to wait for the next chunk before building this |
| 28 | one). Some chunks are big, and some are small. Each one will be a Zip |
| 29 | file, accompanied by a detached PGP signature. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | I don't have an exact timescale planned. Some parts have to be delayed |
| 32 | because they depend on earlier chunks. Other chunks have licensing |
| 33 | problems which I need to sort out. In all, I reckon it'll take about |
| 34 | three or four months for everything to appear. Don't rush me. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | The order of things will probably be like this: |
| 37 | |
| 38 | * Base -- a collection of little libraries, header files and tools which |
| 39 | you need to build everything else. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | * BAS -- the Basic Assembler Supplement. It's a macro library for |
| 42 | BASIC assembler users which generates AOF and does some other |
| 43 | stuff. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | * Sculptrix -- Our 3D border module. There's some lovely code in |
| 46 | here, I think. (Sculptrix has a mutual dependency with Sapphire, |
| 47 | since the Setrix application is Sapphire-based, and Sapphire uses |
| 48 | Sculptrix for its borders.) |
| 49 | |
| 50 | * SDLS -- the Straylight Dynamic Linking System. You know what this |
| 51 | is, I hope. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | * Sapphire -- Straylight's seriously neat library, written entirely in |
| 54 | assembler. I don't imagine anyone actually using this, although I'm |
| 55 | sure some people will find it interesting. |
| 56 | |
| 57 | * Dynamite -- the heap manager. You know about this too. |
| 58 | |
| 59 | * Toys -- some toys, some based on Sapphire. Many of them are |
| 60 | designed to test Sapphire features. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | * STEEL -- our old library. This is C-oriented, and only really |
| 63 | released because Glass needs it. |
| 64 | |
| 65 | * Glass -- the template editor. Go fetch, use, enjoy. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | * Toys -- more toys, mostly older ones, based on STEEL. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | On licensing: sources will be available under the GPL, except for |
| 70 | Sapphire and STEEL, which will be available under the Library GPL. |
| 71 | Software currently available as binaries under different conditions will |
| 72 | continue to be available under those conditions, although this will only |
| 73 | apply to the unmodified binaries, not anything you compile yourself from |
| 74 | the supplied sources. |
| 75 | |
| 76 | I might as well point out that quite a lot of this isn't commercial- |
| 77 | quality stuff. There's hardly any documentation for anything, and |
| 78 | there'll probably be lots of bugs. I'm /not/ planning on doing much in |
| 79 | the way of maintenance on any of this stuff. If it breaks, you get to |
| 80 | keep both pieces. |
| 81 | -- |
| 82 | [mdw] |
| 83 | |
| 84 | `It can't rain all the time.' |
| 85 | -- Eric Draven |