Re: Re: Pilot Port -- 20k ????

[Andrew Pam <xanni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Jan 29, 1999 at 11:53:40AM -0500, Edward Keyes wrote:
> Pilot programs are run directly from storage RAM, so code size is
> not really an issue.  The 20K figure is only for dynamic memory
> usage: stack space, global variables, allocated 'working' storage,
> and so forth... I haven't looked at the zz code closely enough to
> see whether this is necessarily a problem or not.

Zigzag is self-reflexive, and intended to become increasingly so,
with most of the functionality eventually contained within the cells
themselves.  This means that almost all of Zigzag (excepting the storage
and UI toolkit API hooks and an evaluate loop) is expected to be dynamic
"working" storage with a small amount of glue code.  It sounds like the
existing Pilot OS is not well suited to this model, hence my interest
in using uCLinux instead.

> I don't know of any existing hash libraries for the Pilot, but one
> of course could be written.

Or ported.

> Another issue is user input: the Pilot has no keyboard, but it
> does have a touch screen and 6 buttons.  It ought to be worth thinking
> about to see what the best way to interact with zz via a pointing
> device is, as opposed to via lots of keyboard commands.

The existing Zigzag demonstrations are substantially designed around the
use of pointing devices as opposed to the keyboard.  Zigzag functions
are normally invoked by selecting a cell containing executable code with
a pointing device.  Functions can also be bound to keys for convenience,
but that is not a requirement.

Cheers,
	*** Xanni ***
-- 
mailto:xanni@xxxxxxxxxx                         Andrew Pam
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