Hi, David.

DN> > PE>myself).  If I manage to obtain DFLAT, I'll make it
DN> > PE>available on my board.  David Nugent is meant to have
DN> > PE>ported it to OS/2, but I don't get ACH yet, and I can't
DN> > PE>FREQ from Michael Butler, so I'm waiting for David Begley
DN> > PE>to finish his exams to get that.  BFN.

DN> > Do you mean DFLAT that was described in DDJ? I have DDJ files here up to
DN> > about July this year, many seem to contain DFLAT, presumably
DN> > progressively refined versions.

DN>Bear in mind that there are two strains of dflat - dflat
DN>(in C, up to v1.5) and dflat++ (in C++ as at v2.0 in the
DN>November 1993 DDJ).

Yes, I've just finished reading DDJ November. I seem to recall that
dflat++ isn't complete in that issue - more to come?

DN>My port was dflat++ - the C++ version - and it's pretty
DN>much in the 'hack' class since it was only used as a basis
DN>for quickly testing SL/2, the library I'd written for MSDOS
DN>which emulates the main OS/2 subsystems providing a better
DN>basis for implementing event driven user interface software
DN>than the standard MS-Gross software interrupt kludges.

If you've ported ++, how did you get the code so quickly? Or do you work
*real* fast? :-)

DN>The port I did of dflat++ (it was v1.0, not 2.0 although I was surprised tha
DN>there isn't all that much different) just "works", and
DN>that's all - I make no further guarantees since although I
DN>fixed a fair few bugs in it,  there are certain aspects of
DN>the design I am not at all happy with. Some sections of the
DN>code - in particular dispatching menu selections - is
DN>extremely poor programming in that it is unsafe and very un-
DN>OOP for something that is supposed to be written in pure
DN>C++. Type casting is used far too freely, and you can
DN>easily get yourself into lots of trouble with it (which, it
DN>seems to me, is something that C++ was specifically
DN>designed to avoid).

That's a worry. I haven't looked at the code, but you're right - you
need a good reason to typecast (& deviate from OO), and there's no good
reason for "extermely poor programming ... unsafe".

DN>I believe that Jon Wright (contactable at 3:633/379, if you're interested in
DN>following this up) has done a more complete port of version
DN>2.0 to OS/2 and has come up with something more solid -
DN>he's apparently writing an article on it. I know he's
DN>rewritten most of the device interface completely, whereas
DN>I just hacked it to get it working. However, you could
DN>probably use SL/2 with it anyway and therefore use his port
DN>for MSDOS as well, since the OS/2 subsystem API is a
DN>constant and SL/2 follows it fairly religiously with only a
DN>few exceptions. I'll give this a try myself when I come
DN>across his port.

I don't think I'll be chasing Jon's port, but presumably Paul will see
this & may be interested. I'm not running OS/2, and C isn't my favourite
language. (Pascal is, you may recall :-))

DN>SL/2 has also been further debugged since the last release
DN>into AUSTC, with some minor additions and corrections. If
DN>anyone is interested, I'll hatch a 'beta 3'.  I'll see if I
DN>can find someone with a Borland compiler locally to get it
DN>working with BC++ and TASM for MSDOS as well.

Maybe Paul will volunteer. I know he has BC++.

Regards, FIM.

 * SLMR 2.1a * Drop your carrier...we have you surrounded!

--- Maximus/2 2.01wb