Re: Unidentified subject!

[Peter da Silva]

Oh boy. What an exciting development.

Let's see... non-power-of-two character size, so in practice you'll need
to allocate 16 bits to a character to manipulate it... just as cumbersome
as Unicode (which they say is too cumbersome), then they expand it to 32
bits, and store it in a compressed format (so to manipulate it you need
even MORE memory than Unicode). They ignore the existence of UTF (byte
stream Unicode), require a DOS box (ick) to work with their programming
tools, and are targeting a dead processor (the 68000 family... a fine
CPU for the '80s (the Amiga I'm sitting in front of has one in it) but
hardly a name to conjure with today). They have a new operating system
that's integrated with this nonstandard character set (can you say IBM
and EBCDIC?)... and it's in 100% assembly language!

>                          Who should get involved?

Anyone looking for a relaxing hobby, who hasn't the slightest intention
of their work getting beyond the "model railroad" stage. If you really like
the 68000 and want to promote a fine tightly-coded operating system on it,
keep an eye on Escom and buy one of the new Amigas. It's got millions of
systems already sold... and there are still actual stores you can walk into
and buy software for it. Even in its current morbid state it's got far more
potential than this.