From: mdw@excessus.ebi.ac.uk (Mark Wooding) Subject: Re: E is for Enlightenment Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: References: Organization: MRC Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre Reply-To: mdw@ebi.ac.uk Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.programmer [This isn't really a follow-up to anyone in particular, although it belongs in the same thread.] I'm extremely heartened by the interest people have shown. I've even had people throwing themselves at me and trying to persuade me not to do this. This puzzled me. That's not really the point. Thanks to everyone. I ought to try to explain in more detail how the Straylight Source Release (or SSR) is going to work. There's nothing to see yet. Sources, when they appear, will be available by anonymous FTP from odie.barnet.ac.uk, in the directory /pub/Acorn/straylight. The SSR will appear one chunk at a time, hopefully in a sensible order (so that you don't need to wait for the next chunk before building this one). Some chunks are big, and some are small. Each one will be a Zip file, accompanied by a detached PGP signature. I don't have an exact timescale planned. Some parts have to be delayed because they depend on earlier chunks. Other chunks have licensing problems which I need to sort out. In all, I reckon it'll take about three or four months for everything to appear. Don't rush me. The order of things will probably be like this: * Base -- a collection of little libraries, header files and tools which you need to build everything else. * BAS -- the Basic Assembler Supplement. It's a macro library for BASIC assembler users which generates AOF and does some other stuff. * Sculptrix -- Our 3D border module. There's some lovely code in here, I think. (Sculptrix has a mutual dependency with Sapphire, since the Setrix application is Sapphire-based, and Sapphire uses Sculptrix for its borders.) * SDLS -- the Straylight Dynamic Linking System. You know what this is, I hope. * Sapphire -- Straylight's seriously neat library, written entirely in assembler. I don't imagine anyone actually using this, although I'm sure some people will find it interesting. * Dynamite -- the heap manager. You know about this too. * Toys -- some toys, some based on Sapphire. Many of them are designed to test Sapphire features. * STEEL -- our old library. This is C-oriented, and only really released because Glass needs it. * Glass -- the template editor. Go fetch, use, enjoy. * Toys -- more toys, mostly older ones, based on STEEL. On licensing: sources will be available under the GPL, except for Sapphire and STEEL, which will be available under the Library GPL. Software currently available as binaries under different conditions will continue to be available under those conditions, although this will only apply to the unmodified binaries, not anything you compile yourself from the supplied sources. I might as well point out that quite a lot of this isn't commercial- quality stuff. There's hardly any documentation for anything, and there'll probably be lots of bugs. I'm /not/ planning on doing much in the way of maintenance on any of this stuff. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces. -- [mdw] `It can't rain all the time.' -- Eric Draven