Re: mach2 and linux

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, Codesuidae <codesuidae@c...>
wrote:

> Rod McBeath wrote:
>
> >I think I saw on the crossoffice site (www.codeweavers.com) that

if enough

> >people showed interest, they would consider doing the work. I

doubt Art is

> >interested doing the porting (again, they offer the tools), but

possibly if

> >enough interest was shown? I understand that with this software,

it is not

> >run in a windows emulator, but as native code. Please note, I am

NOT a

> >programer, so if I get some of the terminology/facts wrong, I'll

appreciate

> >correcting, but no need to be nasty... :)
> >
> Well, I am a programmer (my day job), and while I haven't used

Crossover

> Office, I see they are working mainly with the WINE project, which

I

> have worked with before. I would have 2 concerns with a port, 3D
> graphics drivers and kernel drivers. An application like Mach2

could be

> challenging if it uses an unsupported graphics toolkit, and its

kernel

> driver would have to be reimplimented to work with Linux. With the
> support of the developers doing the kernel drivers probably

wouldn't be

> too bad, but the graphics drivers have the potential to be a lot of

work

> (on the other hand, they could be quite simple, hard to say without

some

> evaluation by whomever maintains the code).
>
> CS

Interesting concept, but IIRC, Art has spent considderable hours
trying to get around the timing that is inhernet in Windoz. The rest
of the software is easy.

Turbo-CNC is a simple DOS driver program that does at least half of
what Mach2 does.

I would think that if the effort was put into a good interface for
EMC it would be faster to completion than to try to port Mach2 over
to Linux.

On my wish list is a read-ahead feature so the control does not stop
at each line where a slight change of direction is encountered.


Also, by having it ported, you are losing the author, the updates,
support and wind up with a dead end software in short order.