Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 12:04:38 +0100 (BST)
From: Shawn Hargreaves <slh100 AT unix DOT york DOT ac DOT uk>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
cc: "A.Appleyard" <A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk>, DJGPP AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: djgpp 2 DPMI
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960514120735.59E-100000@is>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.91.960514115828.22385B-100000@tower.york.ac.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Tue, 14 May 1996, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > >   What is the progress of making (programs compiled and assembled and 
> > > linked by djgpp v2) fully portable and independent of any faults or 
> > > absence of whatever DPMI is in the PC that it is run on? One way might 
> > 
> > I think you are missing the point. It's not possible to avoid the DPMI 
> > on the machine. That is the whole reason DPMI was required in the first 
> 
> I think what Anthony meant was a possibility to bind a DPMI host with the 
> program, so you'd get a stand-alone executable that serves itself, so to 
> speak.

That would cover "absence of DPMI", but what about "faults"? Binding a 
DPMI host into the program is no good if the machine is already running a 
buggy DPMI: you can't load up and use cwsdpmi in a win95 DOS box, for 
example.

I don't think binding a DPMI host into the executable would be a 
particularly useful thing to do, in any case. The process of loading 
cwsdpmi.exe is totally automatic, and end users don't need to know about 
it. Standalone exe's are kind of appealing, but most programs have 
other support files of their own. I've given lots of djgpp-compiled 
programs to computer illiterate people, and none of them have run into 
the slightest trouble with DPMI issues...


/*
 *	Shawn Hargreaves.        Why is 'phonetic' spelt with a ph?
 *	Check out Allegro and FED on http://www.york.ac.uk/~slh100/
 */