virtual pc for carbon

Whenever I double clicked on an expandable drive - VPC loaded and did the usual.
Click to expand...

jove,

i meant that in VPC 3 when you double click on a drive icon in the finder it mounted in the FINDER. just like a regular disk image. I heard that because Connectix change their images so that they are now expandable, and propriety, finder can't mount them.

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peter
 
hello people...

i am currently working on the carbon version of a really lame pc emulator called macbochs (lame because it is slow, and has very limited functionality). in its non-mac form, it is written by a guy named Kevin Lawton, and the original port of macbochs is by a guy named david batterham. I have taken david's code and basically recompiled it under carbon. I am in the process of adding more funcitonality than what david's port currently has, and one of the coolest things is to use aqua's alpha channel so that the color of the desktop is rendered as a 100% transparent color. this way, if someone were to set the windows "screen" size to the same size as the macintosh "screen" size, choose an arbitrarily distinct color for the windows desktop (background) and then activate the tranparency effect, you would get basically the exact same effect that classic gives to pre carbonized mac apps. the only flaw (or fly) in the ointment is that macbochs doesn't support anything but vga graphics (640x480 max). virtual PC doesn't have this limitation. windows also allows you to configure where the start menu resides, it just so happens that it defaults to the bottom, but it can be placed on the right, or left, or top if you want...

the rest of the stuff remains exactly as it is now, so that the user has a visual context switch..... windows windows look like windows windows carbon/cocoa look like aqua, and classic look like platinum.
 
Someone told me that Apple is working on classic merger into MacOS X. We can open any application on MacOS X without having to start up Classic all the time. Is that true?
 
Originally posted by MacFreak
Someone told me that Apple is working on classic merger into MacOS X. We can open any application on MacOS X without having to start up Classic all the time. Is that true?
Click to expand...

That would be nice. Where did youhere about this?
 
Originally posted by MacFreak
Someone told me that Apple is working on classic merger into MacOS X. We can open any application on MacOS X without having to start up Classic all the time. Is that true?
Click to expand...

I can only think of one way to do that, and it would be a real hack job which would break tons of stuff. It would also waste tons of development manhours which would be better used elsewhere since Classic already works well enough.

Now another possibility is to use a disk image like VirtualPC does so the disk image cannot be tampered with, the other volumes would be mounted as network drives. This would allow one to save the Classic RAM state like one can in VirtualPC, however it has severe drawbacks like disk access speed. I would bet $50k Apple will not do this.

Something more likely is caching the startup sequence like StartupDoubler does.
 
Hello

I just started a new job where we use ReflectionX on NT. Our HP UNIX servers control the NT XWindows client. I know the technology is VERY different from VPC but the UI issues are similar.

The aforementioned idea of a transparent desktop works - ReflectionX has that option. The XWindow "Dock" sits on top of the Windows taskbar. They are both visually static items. The MacOSX dock is not exactly static :->

My personal experience, so far, says the fears of mode switching (i.e. copy command differences) are unfounded. The appearance of the XWindow is clue enough to tell me what change of gestures are needed. I do not see the difference between selecting a single foreign OS window or the entire foreign OS's emulation window. Either way there are visual and gesture changes.

Somebody mentioned they wouldn't want thier Grandmother to use a system with different OS windows inter-mingling. And the same end-user won't have a problem switching from the current VPC and back?

Jove


[Edited by jove on 02-01-2001 at 08:02 PM]
 
>Somebody mentioned they wouldn't want thier
>Grandmother to use a system with different OS
>windows inter-mingling. And the same end-user won't
>have a problem switching from the current VPC and
>back?

Good Point.

Basically, from what everyone is saying on this post it is technically possible to get VPC working like Classic does. Come on Connectix!

peter
 
I didn't write the grandmother comment, but it's true to say that switching to VPC within a window is a lot easier than switching to Xtools which I no longer use. The reason is it's more overtly a non-mac environment when I switch to that window. It has a task bar, it has a different background with a different desktop, etc.

Connectix would be better off implementing a windows-side OpenGL driver which uses the OS X driver.
 
Hello,

Without a doubt an emulator window gives more of a notion of the mode switch. But we are not talking subtle differences here. Different OSs UI are visually different enough. Dumping them into an MDI window is not offering the user substantially less "confusion."

I use virtual pc to mix Windows only apps with those on the Mac. For my use, in this case, full screen is a detriment. Yes, VP is as large as my iBook screen. Strobe, you have said numerous times that full-screen and virtual desktops are not useful. Isn't that what VPC is?

Jove


 
In windows it's difficult to get mutiple applications woring together regardless of the window arrangement. The applications themselves have not been designed with the mentality of working with other apps. MDI is only a symptom of a deeper problem. I mean christ, the task bar isn't even drag+drop savvy, neither is the start menu. Nearly 100% of the interaction between applications takes place via disk access. Makes me wonder why Microsoft bothered with windows and didn't just ask programmers to use SVGALIB.

If I can see a mac web browser or a mac email composition or a mac text document or a graphics canvas in the background, I can drag stuff into it. Stuff other than files.

OK, perhaps it might be nice to be able to see both mIRC and windows IE 5 in the background at the same time but I haven't come across a situation where I use VPC for more than one thing at a time. There just seems little point in it. In fact I wish I could run Classic in a window sometimes.

I think Connectix could work on other stuff than gimmicks. Disk I/O speed is really awful in VPC, to take one example.
 
I prefer windows contained in a window.
As for my person experience, I too only have one app running at a time when in
windows, because usually I go into windows to do something specific. THere have
been a few instances where I had a couple of apps open.

Just to sidetrack a little, what do you (people) think that connectix should improve upon in VPC ?
Does anyone know why they have not made video acceleration a reality yet ?


Admiral
 
Video acceleration meaning what, 2D or 3D?

2D acceleration would be difficult beyond double buffering, and completely pointless in OS X since all window contents in OS X are rendered by the CPU. Even if you write a 2D driver for windows which translates all Win32 2D calls into PDF calls for Quartz I wouldn't imagine much gain, and it would be a lot of effort.

3D might be a different matter since both windows and OS X would use the same API: OpenGL 1.2.

Basically Connectix would write a windows driver which would either translate the emulated calls into GL Driver calls or use the OpenGL.framework. I think you need Apple's graphics DDK in order to know the GL Driver calls (GL Driver is a piece of code which resides outside the kernel which OpenGL.framework pipes GL calls to. There is one GL Driver for every type of 3D card installed in a particular mac) however the OpenGL.framework header is publicly available.

I really hope Connectix considers writing a windows OpenGL driver for VPC.
 
Very informative, thanks ;)
Sorry if I was a bit unclear, I was talking about 3D.
with 2D I could care less ;) Windows operates sufficiently (and sometimes better than windows on PC that I work with at work).
The 3D is a bit more important ;)
I have some software that I kinda like and there is an option for hardware rendering, and one for software rendering of graphics. This is a game, FIFA 2000, but still who said computers could not be fun lol. IN any case, the game is playable but choppy with software rendreding, and there is no hardware rendering....
soooo.... it's all about da 3D graphix ;)

(Any similar experiences out there ??)


Admiral
 
I hope that a year from now all of this debate is irrelevant. I don't want to run classic on OS X, much less windows. I think that Apple is genius for providing the classic transition, but I personally hate it. I don't want to need classic to be productive. I really don't want to run windows to be productive. The OS 9 look and feel is jarring enough when put within the OS X environment, Win2k would be frightening.

I know that sometimes VPC is useful for running that app the somebody just never got around to porting to mac, but I would like to stay focused on getting folks to develop for OS X.

This is a healthy discussion on this thread, and I don't mean to knock it too much. I'm just tired of "necessary evils" like windows emulation etc. Especially when we have something as elegant and powerful as OS X.
 
Hello,

I wouldn't presume to disagree with the 'necessary evil' argument expressed by Lucifer :->

Seriously, although the Mac community is seeing a growth, we still live in a Windows world. At work I use my personal laptop along side the office NT clone - simply because the tools I have are better. But for connectivity and support, my Mac has to pretend to be a Windows machine from time to time.

We can have all the tools necessary but market share is market share. And the ignorant helpless desk is, well, you know.

Jove
 
I'm not sure if I misread it, but it will be cool if you can Windows Binaries similar to Classic Binaries on X. Which is doable.

There is vmware for linux and some others that lets win32apps to run on top of linux and not needing an install of Windows.

If VPC for X can do this, you don't need to create a drive C or a FAT/32/NTFS image. You can use have the binaries on the HFS drive and with the "Windows" as an environment that is similiar to how Class is, it is thereotically possible.

Gives my goosebumbs thinking what apple did to classic in X can be done in the same fashion for Windows, Linux, BSD... *droolz*

They already started something similar for Linux, how hard can it be to do the same for X?

I for one will HOPE that VPC will work like Classic does. It will be much faster having it a new layer for win32 emulated environment.

Forgive me if i sound like an "idiot". :p
 
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