UCSD P-System & "compile once, run anywhere"

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Wed Mar 27 20:36:50 2002

On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Stan Sieler wrote:
> Hi,
> A friend was claiming that with the UCSD P-System, one could "compile once"
> and then "run anywhere" (where "anywhere" means different kinds of
> computers running the P-System, not different instances of the same computer).
> Was this true?
NO
although there were a few machines for which it would be true.

> Did users commonly compile on system A and then take the P-Code to
> system B and run it successfully?
> I'd have thought that media incompatibility would have tended to
> limit this capability.

You are correct; your friend AND the UCSD vendors weren't.
SEVERAL systems would work, but their concept of a "universal format" was
not thought through. Due to disk hardware incompatabilities, it was NOT
possible for Apple and IBM (just two as an example) to share a "universal
disk format", although they DID advertise (FALSELY) exactly that.

> Was any commerical P-System software sold that was a single
> binary,
  ^^^^^^
The basic concept behind it was the distribution of software NOT as a
binary, but as a platform independent "P-code" that was run on a
"P-code" interpreter.

> but the vendor expected the user to be able to install/run it on
> any brand/model of P-System? (Or, did vendors have to produce a version
> for every platform?)

It combined all of the convenience of software development of a compiler
with the speed of execution of an interpreter.


Has anybody ever seen a WORKING/SHIPPED copy of "Xeno-File"? I've heard
that there might have been some procedural irregularities on the
processing of their trademark registration (Supposedly trademark
registration can not be granted until a product is actually being
shipped).


NOTE: I did have some users who used XenoCopy-PC to transfer P system
files from one system to MS-DOS, and then from there to other P system
formats. I am not aware of any other disk format conversion programs that
would do it, so the alternative was serial transfer.

--
Fred Cisin                      cisin_at_xenosoft.com
XenoSoft                        http://www.xenosoft.com
PO Box 1236                     (510) 558-9366
Berkeley, CA 94701-1236
Received on Wed Mar 27 2002 - 20:36:50 GMT

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