Re: [Vrs-development] Re: [DotGNU]pnetlib and the VRS, SEE and other server concepts

[Rhys Weatherley]

Bill Lance wrote:

> At this point, I am almost totally Linux/Unix centric.
>  So much of my problam is pure ingnorance.  Aside from
> the political and philisophical issues (I know, I know
> .. it's hard for me too), what are the basic technical
> issues in developing something that will work on both?

Abstraction, abstraction, abstraction.

Never use a system API - always hide it behind something
else that can be easily redirected elsewhere.

The hardest thing is GUI's, since every widget set has its
own peculiarities.  The next hardest is audio and other forms
of multimedia.  Usually it isn't worth trying to solve this
problem unless you have something like Java AWT around
to take care of the icky details.

The rest can be handled by using straight ANSI C, and
wrappers around the system API's for files, sockets, etc.
Plus a little care.

The pnet code already compiles and runs on both,
because I took abstraction to its religious extreme
in the early stages of the project.  And still do.

Cheers,

Rhys.