> [much stuff about NT deleted]
> Hmm, what would be good (don't know if anyone's done it), would be a type
> of fat binnary that diets the first time it's run to become the platform
> dependant binnary. Well that might have limited appeal, but it would
> appeal to the vender that's just wanting to ship boxes out, preloaded
> with NT; ie you've got a HD image, and you just stick it on a SCSI HD,
> stick it in the NT box (with customers choice of CPU), boot off a floppy,
> install the boot loader, and soak test, no messing with an ALPHA HD
> image, x86 image, MIPS image ....
Well, Bryn, that IS an interesting possibility, but would probably take
some doing. What I've heard they do it just provide some sort of batch
file or script file that determines the CP type, then installs the proper
binaries. Probably take a bit of reworking to make it work on Linux, and
most Mac fat binary versions of programs are 50-75% larger than native. Do
you REALLY want 1 binary for 1 platforms? Probably your fat binary would
be 3-4x the size of the non-fat binary, and if you're downloading a
program, that might be a problem. However, if like you suggested, the SW
was on CDROM, might be doable. One thing Khan made me think of tho, was an
interpreted binary format of some sort - just-in-time compiler, like in
Java language. I guess Java can be very very fast, if optimized right, so
there's something else to chew on for ya. (Food for thought)
Derrik Pates
dpates@cavern.nmsu.edu
--
"Some help would be nice... Or a sandwich and a cold beer!!!" --Boston Low,
"The Dig"