Further; N1MM Logger is developed in MS Visual Basic, which doesn't
port to non-Windows platforms.
http://n1mm.hamdocs.com/tiki-index.php?page=Program+Development
73,
~iain / N6ML
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Kok Chen <chen@mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 25, 2012, at 11:17 AM, Bill, W6WRT wrote:
>
>> I wonder why some programs such as fldigi are written so they will run on
>> almost
>> any operating system, and others such as N1MM Logger will only run on
>> Windows?
>
> Whether you can run a program under various operating systems depends on the
> development environment (Libraries, Framework) that the developer uses. If
> you write for .NET in Windows, you won't expect it to run in Mac OS X, and if
> you write for Cocoa in Mac OS X, you won't expect it to run under Windows.
>
> fldigi uses the Fast and Light Toolkit (fltk) that has its own GUI and audio
> API. In addition to Linux, the fltk Toolkit (libraries, etc) also runs in
> Windows and Mac OS X.
>
> Thus for example, anything that is built using fltk will be able to run in
> Mac OS X as long as you have ported the fltk library into the Macintosh.
>
> >From the computer scientist viewpoint, a program that runs under fltk is not
> >strictly speaking "native." The developer interfaces with the toolkit's
> >system calls in the fltk library, and the library in turn translates the
> >fltk system calls into the native Mac OS X system calls, in case of a
> >Macintosh. This holds for things you draw to a window, the action of
> >pressing a button, passing data to and from sound cards, etc.
>
> As such, you can expect different efficiencies compared to programs that are
> written to run natively in Windows or Mac OS X. But that is not really a
> problem in the modern world, where you hardly eat a few percent of a desktop
> computer's processor capability to begin with. And therefore from the user
> viewpoint, it is "native," as long as you don't mind interacting with a user
> interface that can deviate from what they are used to with the native
> programs.
>
> The inefficiencies will also depend on what you are doing -- if you are
> mostly number crunching (e.g., running DSP code), there is probably zero
> overhead, if you draw a waterfall to a window, you can expect greater
> overhead.
>
> The "FL" in fldigi comes from the name of the Toolkit, just as I use "Cocoa,"
> the primary framework in today's Mac OS X, as part of cocoaModem's name. It
> is also why fldigi has the "Linux look and feel" when you run it on Mac OS X.
> (More accurately, it is the fltk's look and feel.)
>
> Just as you find very different graphical and user interface experience
> between Windows and Mac OS X, the same is true with anything using the fl
> toolkit. When you run fldigi on a Mac, it looks and feels more like a Linux
> program than a Macintosh program, for example. I have not tried it on
> Windows (because I have no computer at the QTH that runs Windows), but I also
> don't expect fldigi to be as pretty as the Ham Radio Deluxe user interface.
>
> You can read more about the FL toolkit here:
>
> http://www.fltk.org/documentation.php/doc-1.1/intro.html
>
> fltk is not the only environment that is multi-platform. REALbasic is
> another common one that runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. RUMlog and
> RUMped are for example written on REALbasic, and can probably be tweaked to
> run on Windows it Tom feels like doing so.
>
> 73
> Chen, W7AY
>
> _______________________________________________
> RTTY mailing list
> RTTY@contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rtty
_______________________________________________
RTTY mailing list
RTTY@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rtty
|