Re: Re: xPL announcement/description protocol -- was xPLDiag

[Gerry Duprey <gerry@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy,

> Gerry is pushing a cross-platform agenda, which would indeed open up
xPL
> to other users - especially those running Linux who also tend to be
> fairly tech-savvy.

Fairly true :-)

>  However, we don't write any of our applications in a
> cross platform manner - in fact, if cross-platform was a goal, that
> would rule out anything written in .NET.  Even my C++ SDK would need
> some effort to port with it's reliance on Windows events to
synchronise
> everything.

Okay -- little clarification -- at least in "my agenda".  I feel
that the
xPL apps that run on PCs themselves can be written in any
language/platform.
the author wants. Obviously, as someone on a minority platform, I'd love to
see everything written in a way that it could be ported to other platforms
easily, but that isn't going to practical for all things.

However, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with creating highly
platform specific xPL applications.  As Keith pointed out in a later
document, some things, like media playback and tight O/S integration, just
are not possible to do well in a cross platform way.

My view is that as long as the protocol as well as any other *required*
elements an app needs to use/participate in xPL are done without bias
toward
or exclusion of any OS/platform, the actual app implementation can be
anything the developer wants.

So, for example, when there is discussion of something like xPLMediaNet, I
don't even raise an eyebrow.  It's clearly a creature of and takes full
advantage of it's Windows environment and I think that it's great.

When we had some brief conversations about hubs using mutex's to talk to
each other though, that raised a concern because there could be apps from
several different frameworks on a single PC and some would not be able to
participate (and I'm very happy with the outcome of the hub discussion).

Just to clarify what I'm "pushing" a bit more :-)

Gerry

--
Gerry Duprey
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
http://www.cdp1802.org