Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 11:26:46 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Cc: DJGPP Workers Mailing List <djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: "djverify" - DJGPP Installation Diagnostic Program
In-Reply-To: <323A1C3F.3728@cs.com>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960916111544.21681M-100000@is>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Fri, 13 Sep 1996, John M. Aldrich wrote:

> 4) Initially, I think I will have it run in plain b/w text mode, with
> some basic windowing functions thrown in to make it look nicer.

The larger and more complicated the program, the more it runs the risk of
failing on some weird and/or obscure machines.  I suggest that the basic
program be as light as you can get, printing a simple analysis report as
plain text, in English only.  The more fancy interactive version can then
be spawned from the basic one (e.g., when given a certain command-line
switch), after the system has passed the initial diagnostics. 

>    Question:  Am I safe in assuming that every computer the program
>    runs on will be capable of displaying the extended ASCII character
>    set (127-255)?  If not, is there any way to test for this?

See above.  I say: leave it for the interactive part which isn't required
to do the basic diagnostics.  Developing a program that will display
foreign characters requires you to test it on machines with foreign
language support, which means more time in testing and more potential
bugs.