Re: Fullscreen application Specs

--- In [email protected], "Rocky" <rocsystems@...> wrote:
>
> The sort for the flist would be great --- But 
> not going to happen very fast unless you volunteer 
> to write it with me in "C"...
> 
> Nice easy routine for you in "C" and I will learn 
> from the experience.

You will not learn how to program in C by watching
me program in C. I thought you already knew how
to program in C, anyway? I didn't offer to teach
you the C language, I offered to assist you in 
switching an existing knowledge of C to the 
mainframe.

Sorting is something that can be written in
standard C.

Regardless, what you need is already written.

Cut and paste qsort() from here:

http://pdos.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pdos/pdos/pdpclib/stdlib.c?view=markup

I wouldn't have started with this personally,
since qsort is a general-purpose function
that calls another function. So by its nature
it looks complicated. And also it is recursive,
so R13 will need to point to an even bigger
"save area" than usual.

I would have started with a simple function, as
I suggested long ago. 

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/H390-VM/message/7375

But if you want to wade into the deep end 
immediately, that's up to you. It should work, 
and if you look at that qsort code, it is all 
written in standard C, so if you already know 
C, and are happy using C, as you said you did 
and were, you should recognize the code. Except 
for the word __PDPCLIB_API__. You won't 
recognize that. Just delete that (one word). I 
don't like that polluting the code either, but 
someone else needed it for their environment, 
so I have to live with it.

> Will you pick up the challenge. I promise to 
> work with you and build all the interfaces 
> that you need and the routine should take you 
> an hour to write.
> 
> I will probably take me a day to build the interface.

If you did what I suggested long ago:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/H390-VM/message/7375

it would take less than 30 minutes total, spread 
over 3 10-minute sessions, to get C operational in
your existing environment.

That daunting prospect, and various other
things (that mostly aren't true) are what you
cited as the barrier to using C. I can get
you over those barriers. That is what I
offered to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

If the actual barrier is that your knowledge
of C is so poor that you don't actually know
how to write a simple sort in C, or even
call qsort, then that is the barrier to 
overcome first, and that knowledge will
have to come from someone other than me, e.g.
a programming course at university (doesn't
matter if the course uses Unix, or MSDOS,
it's the same language). Only then can I 
assist in transferring that knowledge to the
mainframe (the only thing I offered to do).

There is no point writing in C if you don't
actually know C. It will be unmaintainable.
Just stick with assembler if that's the
case.

On the other hand, if you know C, it should
take 30 minutes to get C operational, just as
I said long ago:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/H390-VM/message/7375

and I was willing to stand by those words,
which is why I said:

"If the above doesn't work exactly like I said it
would, post the results here, including the
assembler code, and I'll diagnose."

and getting qsort working after that should only
be another 30 minutes (I'm a bit nervous as to
whether your R13 will point to a big enough
buffer).

Compare that to the man-years of effort it took
me to get a native C compiler on your VM system.
And others spent man-months on it too. I
personally started working on it about 15 years
ago.

There are circumstances where I am happy to
write or fix utilities for people, but they
are in circumstances where I can see that I
can save someone a lot of time and
aggravation.

Not circumstances where someone says they want
to write in C, says they are willing to spend
a day getting it working (even though I expect
that 30 minutes is sufficient), and then I post 
the code required, and the steps required, and
not even 30 minutes is spent, nevermind 1 day, 
and then that person comes back and accuses me 
of not walking the walk and just saying RTFM.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/H390-VM/message/7375

Under those circumstances, you just get sent
back to the original message, and asked to
live up to what YOU PROMISED to do but failed
to deliver on YOUR PROMISES:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/H390-VM/message/7375

ie 1 man-day spent on testing C.

An apology for the lies about saying to RTFM and
not delivering what I promised myself wouldn't go
astray either, but I can live without that, as
I've learned that waiting for justice is like
waiting for NATO to topple all of Israel's enemies,
or waiting for France to protect Iraqi women from
being raped by Uday. Ain't gunna happen, no matter
how outrageous that may seem.

BFN.  Paul.