Re: New File Release: xconq-7.5.0-0pre.0.20041228

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Hi Bob,

Bob Beaty wrote:

> I think the new release sounds great.
> I wondered if the support for Mac OSX has simply dried up?

The main developer for the Mac native port of Xconq has not been heard 
from for a while. I don't whether this is because he is on sabbatical 
and simply too busy or whether he got upset after a disagreement that I 
had with him. Or maybe some other reason.... I do hope that he wasn't in 
Sri Lanka recently though; that is where he was last Feb or March when 
he disappeared for a while, IIRC.

Sourceforge does have a compile farm which includes a MacOS box or two. 
At some point, I will be attempting to compile Xconq on MacOS using the 
SF farm. However, since I have no MacOS (9 or X) machine at home, I 
cannot test the results. I will need testers. You are only one of two 
MacOS users that I know of (besides Hans).

As Lincoln stated in his reply while I was writing this one, we are 
trying to reduce the number of interfaces officially supported. Since 
the Mac native interface was platform-specific and I had no means of 
building and testing it, I pulled the plug on it. I also pulled the plug 
on the old X11 interface. This leaves the Tcl/Tk, SDL, and Curses 
interfaces. I was planning on getting rid of the Tcl/Tk interface before 
the 7.5.0 release; however, after working with it some more, I am 
willing to commute its death sentence for at least one more release 
cycle. This should make at least one Solaris user happy.

You should note that the Tcl/Tk and SDL interfaces used to work on the 
Mac. It is my hope that if I can get them to compile correctly and have 
some patient testers to work with, I can support your platform again.

Of course, if you know of any willing MacOS developers, that would be 
even better....

   Regards,
     Eric