Evening one and all, Happy New Year first of all, may 2008 be a happy, healthy and prosperous one for everyone.
Windows ate my laptop recently. Over the festive period my Xp system, fired up for the first time in absolutely ages, removed my Linux root drive (partition) without so much as a by-your-leave. As you would imagine, I was a tad peeved at such behaviour. I was deleting the 20 GB "D" drive as I wanted the space for Linux, and as I haven't used anything on XP for ages, I decided to de-install everything, delete the drive and reuse it as a Linux mount instead. Well, Windows did everything correctly until I deleted the drive, I selected the D drive and requested that it be deleted, Windows did so, but at the same time, deleted my root partition, leaving me OS-less on my laptop. After a few attempts at retrieving the partition table, which worked, I found myself with no file system on the partition any longer, it was gone. With no system backups (I do backup my own data though!) I had no alternative but to re-install. After a wee while of this, I have a brand new system - and not a byte of Windows anywhere in sight - the "C" drive got reused for my new root drive instead. I now have a completely Linux laptop. This of course, leaves me with a slight problem. WHen I go away, I usually take the laptop to watch DVDs, listen to my music, read 'books' etc, but also for QPC and my ongoing Assembly Language series. To this end, and I can almost hear Marcel groaning right now, I'm wondering what the possibility of getting a Linux version of QPC is? Do I hear the work 'slim' or even 'no chance at all' out there? Don't get me wrong here, I'm not asking for a free version of QPC for Linux. I'm even willing to put work into it myself, if I can, to help develop it, assuming it is possible. I use QT4 for C++ development on Linux, occasionally, and if the 'engine' of QPC is simply (Sorry Marcel, I know it isn't simple) something that could be converted to a library, or a module that is called, I suspect I could possible manage to build a sort of working version of QPC for Linux - a little naive there perhaps, but I know almost nothing of how QPC actually works. Now, my version of QT4 is only for applications that are Open Source, so if the engine was modular, I could write the GUI around it, and easily release the source code - without compromising on all the work and effort that Marcel has performed over the years. Additionally, the Linux version would, I imagine, only be available as an 'add on' to the Windows version. Now, whether the above is feasible, possible or even desired, I have no idea. I have tried to run QPC under wine on Linux but with little success. When I type in a command at the #0 prompt, I get an instant repeat of the first character or the command, and random ones after that. So 'dir ram1_' would turn out to be 'ddddddddddddddddddddddddddirrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrram1_' or similar. Not very much use to me! As I said above, I'm willing to put in the work, and assuming I have the required skills of course, to make this happen, but I depend on the hard work of Marcel in the first place. It may not be possible. Comments? Ideas? Criticism? As I said, I'm not looking for a free version of QPC to run on Linux, I'm looking to see if I can help produce a version where some of the code is free (mine) and some is not. My code will have to be made available as that is the terms of the licence, but I do not have to expose Marcel's code to the Open Source community at all. Anyway, having said all that, I'm ducking out for a bath (and a read!) and will check back tomorrow to see if I have stirred up a nest of hornets, or if I actually have had a (rare) good idea! Cheers, Norman. _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
