Mail Archives: djgpp/1998/02/10/10:32:21
From: | Ned Ulbricht <nedu AT ee DOT washington DOT edu>
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Newsgroups: | comp.os.msdos.djgpp
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Subject: | Re: Suggestion: Portability section for libc docs
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Date: | Tue, 10 Feb 1998 06:20:39 -0800
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Organization: | University of Washington
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Lines: | 55
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Message-ID: | <34E06236.3D3B@ee.washington.edu>
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References: | <m0y2A7f-000S2cC AT inti DOT gov DOT ar>
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NNTP-Posting-Host: | cs239-4.student.washington.edu
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Mime-Version: | 1.0
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To: | djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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DJ-Gateway: | from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp
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Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net> wrote:
> Although DJGPP is of course the best DOS development environment in the
> known universe :), there is one feature I miss from Turbo C. There, the
> documentation for each function included a "Portability" section, indicating
> how possible it would be to use the function on other systems. I'd like to
> suggest something similar be added to DJGPP. Each function could say whether
> it is ANSI, POSIX, available on Unix or other DOS compilers, unique to
> DJGPP, etc.
> Before everyone gets upset, I am willing to work on this myself. However, I
> don't have the ANSI or POSIX standards and don't have much experience with
> other DOS compilers, other than a very old version of Turbo C. Perhaps
> someone can tell me where I can get (by e-mail or FTP only, please)
> summaries or lists of functions defined by the standards (or even the
> standards themselves, though I gather they cost lots of money :( ).
>
> I think this would be a significant aid to people trying to write portable
> programs with DJGPP.
First, this idea would benefit not just the djgpp community, but the
whole gcc community. I'm completely in favor of it.
Second, after thinking about it for a little bit, it seems to me that
the only way to completely avoid issues of copyright theft and
plagiarism is to create a validation stub for functions in the djgpp
distribution and then attempt to compile/run them under a selection
of other compilers/platforms.
Obviously there's not a problem with relying on public domain
references when they're relevent and available. And certain functions
can just be declared non-portable (djgpp only or gcc only) by fiat. But
to list something as portable will usually require relying on sources
which are not in the public domain--unless we test it ourselves.
I don't think there's a problem with using copyrighted references as
*references*. For instance "both Borland and Microsoft say that function
foo() is portable among MS-DOS platforms" so we *tested* it on them and
we think it is too. But if we don't test, then I think it ultimately
just comes down to just copying someone else's work.
As a counterpoint: There's the line of reasoning, popular among
students, that if you copy something from three different places it's
not plagiarism. I don't think that really holds up in court all that
well, though.
Ultimately, this information should be in the public domain. But
ANSI/ISO do support themselves by selling standards--and Microsoft,
Borland et al by selling compilers with documentation. I would not be
surprised if one of them got upset by our changing the legal status of
a piece of information they thought they owned.
--
Ned Ulbricht
mailto:nedu AT ee DOT washington DOT edu
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