EV:N in an Intel environment

So, what's up?

I was curious as to what will become of EV:N in an Intel environment. Does the code, as it currently stands, contain portability, or will the Windows port need to be...ahh...reverse ported?

Or am I just clueless and this is a non-issue?

From what I understand the code was redesigned to be platform independant? But that would make the resource fork even more problematic...

Well if nothing is done Mac Nova will be emulated by Rosetta, but who knows how well that will work. The EV3 engine is already a CPU hog and draws to the screen in some weird way, it might do fine, or it might not. Maybe ASW will recompiling it to work as a Universal Binary?

This post has been edited by Ragashingo : 28 June 2005 - 06:44 PM

Resource forks are a non-issue. They are part of the file system, and nothing to do with the particular CPU you're running on.

Nova is currently almost at the stage where the two platform version are synchronised, and can be compiled with a single click to build two versions. It is possible that the Mac version could be made compliant with Intel-based Mac OS X systems, but I don't know if that's on Ambrosia's horizons. They have enough work as it is.

I, personally, will be continuing to support EVN (from a scenario point of view) for as long as it is sold.

best always,

Dave @ ATMOS

So does this mean Windows users will no longer need to mess with silly converters?

Ragashingo, on Jun 28 2005, 06:49 PM, said:

So does this mean Windows users will no longer need to mess with silly converters?View Post

I sincerely doubt that Mac plugs will stop using the resource fork, as that would prevent ResEdit from editing plugs, and leave EVONE as the only Mac editor. However, it does appear to mean that you don't need to worry about many platform-dependant bugs.

Edwards

Edwards is correct.

Heh, dumb question on my part... Thats what you get by trying to study chemistry and think about Nova things at the same time

Edwards, on Jun 28 2005, 08:27 PM, said:

I sincerely doubt that Mac plugs will stop using the resource fork, as that would prevent ResEdit from editing plugs, and leave EVONE as the only Mac editor.
View Post

EVONE and Mission Computer that is. But if the resource fork weren't used, neither of these programs could edit plugins either.

apache1990, on Jun 30 2005, 11:34 AM, said:

EVONE and Mission Computer that is. But if the resource fork weren't used, neither of these programs could edit plugins either.View Post

No, EVONE does support the Windows plug format. That's why I specifically mentioned it.
However, the arguement is utterly pointless, as the resource fork will continue to be the location of all Nova plug-in data on the Macintosh.

Edwards

Edwards, on Jun 29 2005, 01:27 AM, said:

However, it does appear to mean that you don't need to worry about many platform-dependant bugs.
View Post

With any luck we won't need to worry about any bugs at all.

I can't guarantee that, but I'm doing my best!

Dave @ ATMOS

Excuse me, but didn't EVNova work fine when Apple switched from Motorola to IBM as it's hardware maker? The same would go for Intel. As far as I'm to understand from all these posts, Intel will make hardware specific for Apple. There won't be a mac running on a Pentium processor, so there won't be a big problem.

You understand wrong. Macs will be running on Intel Pentium processors. The "move" from Motorola to IBM was nothing because both the G3 G4 and G5 all make use of the PPC instruction set. In moving to Intel Apple is moving to the X86 instruction set, the same thing just about every PC out there uses.

Unfortunately, there is more to this that recompiling the Mac code or back-porting the PC code. Indeed, Nova (as the other EVs) has been developped using CodeWarrior and its specific features (say, PowerPlant), and there won't be any CodeWarrior for Intel. Read these comments from andrew

apache1990, on Jun 30 2005, 09:34 AM, said:

EVONE and Mission Computer that is. But if the resource fork weren't used, neither of these programs could edit plugins either.
View Post

Correct me if I have misunderstood what rosetta does, but can't it emulate EVNEW as well? That would put 3 editors on mac.

Artanis, on Jul 1 2005, 01:49 PM, said:

Correct me if I have misunderstood what rosetta does, but can't it emulate EVNEW as well? That would put 3 editors on mac.View Post

I think you're misunderstanding Rosetta. If I recall correctly, it is supposed to allow you to run programs that were written for the old (well, current) big-endian architecture on the new Intel little-endian systems. In other words, it won't do anything about running Windows programs- for that you'll need to install Windows on your computer.

Edwards

Or of course, go about porting WINE

pipeline said:

Nova is currently almost at the stage where the two platform version are synchronised, and can be compiled with a single click to build two versions.

Does this mean that future versions of EV Nova for Macintosh might gain support for .rez-format plug-ins? (If it did, this would certainly influence my roadmap for future versions of MissionComputer. )

Artanis said:

Correct me if I have misunderstood what rosetta does, but can't it emulate EVNEW as well?

Rosetta is for running PowerPC-Macintosh programs on an Intel-Macintosh. It does not run Windows programs on any type of Macintosh.

Edwards, on Jun 28 2005, 08:27 PM, said:

...as that would prevent ResEdit...

We've forgotten one itty bitty detail:

There will be no Classic.

I would also like to mention that EVN, in its public state, will not run on Rosetta. Rosetta emulates pure Cocoa applications. EVN is heavily Carbon with some Cocoa/Classic specific code I believe, whicvh means Rosetta will say "WTF IS THIS?" and throw it out. Carbon will not be emulated by Rosetta. Period. If you have any Carbon in your app, it won't work.

EVN will need to be patched enough to let Xcode compile it as an FAT binary (if I recall correctly, this means pure Cocoa too, but maybe I'm wrong), then you will be able to play it on your shiny new Intel-based Mac.

It's also probably worth pointing out that the chipsets Apple will be using will not be x86. These chips will, like the PPC chip, be a RISC architecture, not that that is really relevant.