Mail Archives: djgpp/2002/07/18/10:53:41
Thomas Harte <ThomasHarte AT delete DOT lycos DOT co DOT spam DOT uk> wrote:
[...]
> assuming that I don't have the memory to log all keypresses and then
> write them to disc when the second program terminates.
Why not? Let's see: how fast can even a *very* fast human type? Ten
keys per second, or let's say a hundred (even the typematic isn't that
fast)? If you let that person hack away freely for as long as (s)he
can stay awake, that'll be on the order of one hundred thousand
seconds times 100 keys per seconds, for a total of 10 Megabytes. If
that person is *extremely* fast and can keep up that pace for 30 hours
on end, that is. And you say you don't have memory for that? In a
DJGPP application?
I'd say that compared to the probability of anyone ever managing to
type 10 Megabytes in one session, the hassles you'll run into if you
try to actually do multi-tasking on DOS, with one of the two tasks
being an arbitrary, unknown, potentially incooprerative piece of
software written by someone else, are not worth going into.
It's not strictly impossible, but very hard to achieve that. You'ld
have to catch just about every single interrupt call the daughter
program could make to DOS, BIOS or whatever. Essentially, you'ld have
to run the daughter in a fully virtualized DOS machine, i.e. reinvent
Windows 3.1.
--
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker AT physik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.
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