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[Rant] Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / TaoANN.lu
Posted on 27-Jan-2001 20:27 GMT by Christian Kemp10 comments
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Colin Wilson writes: Something occurred to me - while I fully support the route Amiga Inc have taken with using Tao as the core OS, I am not sure how it`s use will translate to the real world. Since Tao is portable, and code written on one machine will work on another, how will the use of the AmigaDE develop if a machine was only designed to use Tao and not the Amiga add-ons, natively ?

Will the Amiga environment simply be classed as a toolkit that some software needs to run, and in which case, will it ever be included with commercial software (ie. games) rather like the way DirectX is distributed with PC software ?

If updates are made available over a period of time, will the updates / bugfixes be free, and how will they be made available for the wide range of platforms (ie. updates for mobile devices such as mobile phones) ?

Another concern is over the portable code. Will a software company be willing to release the source to it`s applications / games (because essentially, that`s what VP is) - bearing in mind the threat of software theft / illegal copying ?

I`m probably missing something here, but can anyone see any way around these potential problems ?

Is Amiga Inc destined to merge with Tao from a product viability point of view ?
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 1 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Colin Wilson on 26-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
Oops, the title contained a typo - it should have read "thoughts" :-}
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 2 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Hagge on 26-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
You don't get all the sound, gfx, 3d and so on apis with elate. So i suppose ppl wonnt run it on "elate boxes". And the binares haven't to be vp source code? I thought they could be distibuted as "compiled" binaries?
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 3 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Colin Wilson on 26-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
They might be able to be distributed as "compiled", but I thought to maintain the cross platform portability they had to be in VP ?!?
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 4 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Dave on 26-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
Everything is compiled into a very low level bytecode.
That gets distributed, and compiled into native at run
time.
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 5 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 26-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
See Java for how it works. It's basically the same.
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 6 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 26-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
As I understand it, there's a disturbing array of packaging possibilities; meaning, if a company wants to develop with Amiga tools but ship seemingly normal "native" software, they may have the ability to "roll-in" the DE/VP components transparently. Not the best way to go about it from a DE-booster's perpective, obviously, but it sounds like the ability will exist for those who want to use it. The general concept is to package compiled VP bytecode, as stated, then ship it for all platforms, possibly with translators/DE configurations or whatnot... (I get the sense that Amiga has some preferences in this direction, but is keeping everything under wraps, as they like to...)
Regarding how the DE will be seen, I believe it's meant to be treated as a seperate OS/environment from straight Elate/Intent. It may be that the DE is more a "distro" of Tao's product than anything else, but since the burden of support falls on Amiga... anyone familiar with the Linux game knows how it plays.
I imagine simple (backend) code would be fully portable between Tao's product and Amiga's end-result, but when it comes to all the added features and the interface... it's a matter of degree, and I assume the "very close partnership" will lead to Tao pointing to Amiga when they encounter a customer who needs the full API/interface load. After all, isn't it easier on Tao when they can focus the majority of their energy on supporting one client, Amiga Inc.?
My guess would be that Mr. Charig's recent, uh, "seperatist," comments are based on Amiga's current status; Tao doesn't want to snub any of their other clients, right? ...and they probably _don't_ want to get stuck fighting to apply MP when their product is viable and selling without it :)
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 7 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Kjetil Hvalstrand on 28-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
I se no point in running VP code i mobil telepone as you
have limited RAM, and system resorsses.
Just tink of the space the VP-Compiler/Translator needs.
And how optimzied vill the VP code be after a translation
between VP and netiv-asembler binerys,
and not to menchen the CPU usage, needed for the translation.
VP-code can be use full if compaines whear to write
system drivers and apps for GFX cards.
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 8 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Fabio Alemagna on 28-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Kjetil Hvalstrand):
Elate has been seen running on a Motorola cell phone (can't remember the mode now) as well. It makes sense as long as the technological market is "converging" in one, single, direction. This is the digital convergence era, pal. Face it :)
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 9 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by KSK on 28-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Kjetil Hvalstrand):
> I se no point in running VP code i mobil telepone as you
> have limited RAM, and system resorsses.
> Just tink of the space the VP-Compiler/Translator needs.
I think it was something like 60kb for Linux and 88kb for Windows,
so I do not think that is a major issue. And I've seen VP binaries
that are 30% of the native binary size...
> And how optimzied vill the VP code be after a translation
> between VP and netiv-asembler binerys,
So far I've seen some very good results, except on FPU performance.
(sometimes VP code is faster than the native...)
I think it is realistic to expect *almost* native speed.
> and not to menchen the CPU usage, needed for the translation.
Neither that should be an issue.
And for example some often used tools can be pre-compiled during
power up / installation, if so desired...
But only time will tell...
-KSK
Thoughts - Practicalities of AmigaDE / Tao : Comment 10 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Alex Klauke on 28-Jan-2001 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Kjetil Hvalstrand):
Well, I guess you can agree that there is no need for a compiler on a mobile do you, at least with AmigaDE? ;-)
As for the translators: size ranges between 12kB and 88kB according to Tao
(and the 88.000 Bytes are for that MSOS..) as translating is just about replacing a word/phrase with a word/phrase of the target language (with some
additional logic surely). So that should not be a problem.
Even when the complete system for a handheld device is about 2 Megs it should
fit on most devices available today (mobile phones and PDAs). So I agree with
Fabio that we'll see the effects of convergence in that area (mobile phone only
devices will become headsets and handhelds will have integrated GSM/GPRS/UMTS).
One additional point for the direction AmigaInc. is taking with the DE is that for the first time ever users may design their own applications for their mobile devices as I guess we'll see some authoring tools like CanDo, Scala and the like to make it rather simple.
BTW the motorola phone was a TimePort1088 which was presented by Sun's CEO on
last years CES.
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