From sevush@rcn.com Wed Dec 05 04:52:01 2001
Subject:OT: A real OS

I was thinking about just this, because linux and BSD are so much more
stable and will perform better.

There would be a LOT of work to do. First, there's the plugin interface,
which would be easiest and the DirectX emulation, still plenty of work but
well defined. There's a loader, again some work but all doable by one good
person.

Here's where it gets hairy - the UI. There are so many ways to get this done
and you'd have to accomodate all possibilities. It would be great if, say
everyone used the MFC classes and then you could create a DLL to bind to,
but I know that even if I want to use just MFC there are lots of kernel
calls I'll use to make things work smoothly.

It's literally anticipating, emulating hundreds of potential functions. Yes,
there are windows emulators out there but it's nasty stuff.

I think it would be more productive to use the embedded Windows CE stuff,
but I have NO information or experience with that and for all I know,
support for plugins/DirectX does not exist for CE.

Anyone able to run these apps/plugins on CE?

> Hey Dan! and all...
> Couple o' questions (completely and totally hypothetical) :
> How easy would it be, letsjussay, to port/run the NI products
> to a linux
> platform??
>
> Cuz, letsjussay, a guy was working on just such a keyboard project,
> letsjussay, and wanted a stable, powerful, portable opsys that didn't
> enrich Mr B.G. AND would actually work. That would run, with some
> minimum mods, all the sequencing and virtual modules and plugs, from
> a keyboard, oh, letsjussay two manual unit and give the end user a
> bona fide workstation cuz it'd run the s/w that the*user* selected,
> AND had full midi integration to run whatever modules the user
> preferred, possibly internal to the kb .... I mean, hypothetically.
>
> Izzat ....... feasable?
>
> Larry