FoxBASE+

[Steve Dyer]

In article <351 at telly.UUCP> evan at telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>> Yap, yap, yap...Jeezuz, give me a break.  The whole point of the Xenix/UNIX
>> merged 386 product is that there won't have to be individual ports to both
>> flavors of 386 UNIX.  The current copy of Xenix FoxBase should run fine under
>> the merged port.
>
>Talk about yap. This is the kind of stuff I get from salesmen.  You don't have
>a clue whether or not the merged product will run Xenix binaries any better than
>early VP/ix ran DOS binaries.
>
>Right now the merged product is still Class A vaporware. And every day we wait
>for it is another day Fox Software loses out.

Yeah.  I guess the only alternative is to kvetch and bitch incoherently.
If it feels good, do it, but spare us.

There's actually a big difference between the merged port running both
V.3 and XENIX binaries and VP/ix supporting just about every kind of DOS
program, and that is in the nature of the environment that is expected and
supported.  VP/ix has to completely emulate a generic IBM PC environment
(not just DOS--in fact, it will run programs which do not use DOS) and
it's remarkable that it does as well as it does.  Both XENIX and V.3
programs are considerably "better behaved", if not "well behaved", simply
because what a program can do under both operating systems is greatly
constrained by the system call interface.  So, developers of the
merged port have a small leg up -- there's less that can go wrong although
it still isn't trivial.

The merged port is not "Class A vaporware".  As others have mentioned,
the first releases of the port have gone to the resellers like SCO and
Microport and ISC for their own integration.  What's more, the technology
is already in place and being distributed.  XENIX 386 2.3 provides the ability
to execute V.3 binaries under a XENIX environment.  In any event, since
the merged port was driven by Microsoft, I would imagine that binary
compatibility with existing applications would be an absolute requirement.
This has certainly been their track record over the past years.  And, since
SCO distributes the Foxbase products, any flaws in the port relative to
executing XENIX binaries will be fixed expeditiously, since they cannot
be in a position of distributing something which causes their applications
base to break.  So, in a sense, the Foxbase products are in a *better position*
to be ensured of running than some company's random 386 binary.

Yeah, you might hear this from an unusually intelligent salesman.  Big deal.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer at harvard.harvard.edu
dyer at spdcc.COM aka {harvard,husc6,linus,ima,bbn,m2c,mipseast}!spdcc!dyer