[linrad] Re: Windows graphics again

[<leif@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> > I think it probably will work the other way. One of the ideas
> > with Linrad is to encourage people to modify the code and add
> > their own routines for controlling hardware or presenting more
> > information on the screen. This will be possible under Linux
> > only, but given the very low number of Linrad users, the
> > interest is pretty low now.
>
> Why is it possible under Linux only ?
Hmmm, what I ment is that an averagely skilled radio amateur can
make changes to the Linrad source code, tyme "make linrad.exe"
and get something that will work on the Windows machine.

Of coures anyone with adequate computing skils can do whatever
it takes to install the source files, a suitable C compiler
and nasm for MS Windows and then set up a makefile. I do not
think the Linux configure script will be very useful so it
will be necessary to understand what it does to the code to
remove it. Actually (of course) it does not matter to the
Windows executable - but it makes it a little more complicated
to move everything to Windows.

Of course I must agree that "possible under Linux" might be
a serious overstatement but I think you will find that this
will be so from a practical point of view.

> > If Linrad becomes common among Windows users in the ham
> > community, I think an awareness of how easily one can
> > change it and give modified versions to friends should
> > encourage a lot of (particularly younger) hams to take
> > the challenge:-) Today they do not know what Linrad is, not
> > even that it exists.
>
> From my experience with atlc, there are perhaps 100 users, but I
> suspect only a few percent of them modify the code.
A consider a few percent quite sucessful. Presumably the reasons
for personalizing atlc are rather small as compared to Linrad.

> >>1) If you write text files, use fp=fopen("foo","rt") or
> fopen("foo","wt").
> >>
> >>UNIX silently ignores the "t" for text or "b" for binary, but for
> >>Windows it is important.
> >
> > Hmmm, I am opening the text files like this: fopen("foo","w") or
> > fopen("foo","r"). I have not noticed any problems other than
> > the usual one that Windows uses return and line-feed while
> > Linux only uses one of them.
>
> I've certainly seen problems. It may have been writing binary
> files, I can't recall. But I think it is
> safer to put the "t" or "b". The software I wrote for
> transmission lines was not working properly on
> DOS and was found to be the lack of the "t" (or was it "b" ??)
> option. Adding it got it working
> properly on both platforms.
Maybe it is because I use some version of gcc under mingw32.
I know that under DOS a single occurance of ctl Z is interpreted
as end of file so a binary file is never read further than to
the first occurance of 26 if it is opened as a text file.
Seems like the default is binary under gcc:-)


> >>2) If it compiles on Windoze and your favorite Linux (Redhat or
> >>whatever) don't assume it will compile
> >>on all Linux/UNIX systems.
> >
> > OK. Actually it compiles under Linux only.
>
> I'm confused. You have Windows binaries, but it only compiles under Linux.
> Perhaps you use Cygwin?
No, I have one computer with Debian Linux. On this machine I have
svgalib, nasm and mingw32. Just by typing make "linrad.exe" this
computer produces linrad.exe.

The Debian machine is on a network and on the network I have a laptop
running Windows XP (Or RedHat 9). On the network there is also a
computer with Win98 and another one running Win 2000. I can execute
the linrad.exe file from the network on all three machines so I
can verify that I did notdo anything that requires one or the other
version of Windows.

> Does that mean only Redhat?
Oooh No!! It means every (reasonable) Linux distribution that is
not much older than RedHat 6.1. I occasionally verify that the code
still runs on an old Pentium computer with very little memory on which
it is not so easy to install a modern Linux distribution.

> But new algorithms are more likely to appear if more people can
> compile it, which means making it more
> portable. I tried compiling it under Solaris on SPARC and soon
> realised it was very Linux dependant. I
> gave up at that point. I apprecaite the number of SPARC users for
> ham software must be quite low, but
> if the code only compiles on Redhat, you are seriously
> restricting the user base.
Surely true, but that is not the case. I have tested several of each of
RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Fedora, Debian and Slackware. There have been
several bugs in various distributions and I have made the changes
required to make Linrad compile under all of them. There have also been
quite a lot of errors in the sound systems over the years and therefore
the soundcard init routine is quite a bit more complicated than would be
needed on a modern distribution.

The message I tried to convey is that it is extremely easy for a newcomer
with practically no programming experiences to change the Linrad code.
Certainly it is not easy to change the actual processing in a meaningful
way, but sending commands to a tranmitter over the serial port or showing
some more information on the screen is very easy. Easiest, write a line
at the top of the screen "THIS COPY OF LINRAD HAS BEEN HACKED BY XXXXX".
If I were a 14 years old newcomer I might have started at something
like that to give to my friends;-) Showing time, date, parameter values
or any other global data is also very easy....

73

Leif




>
> --
> Dr. David Kirkby PhD CEng MIEE,
> Senior Research Fellow,
> Department of Medical Physics,
> Mallet Place Engineering Building,
> Gower St,
> University College London,
> London WC1E 6BT.
>
>
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