Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!olm From: olm@daimi.aau.dk (Ole Lehrmann Madsen) Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta Subject: Re: The signes, sizes and Endianness of Basic pattern Date: 3 Jan 1996 22:29:03 GMT Organization: DAIMI, Computer Science Dept. at Aarhus University Lines: 76 Message-ID: <4cevvf$5ti@krone.daimi.aau.dk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: clematis.daimi.aau.dk Thus spake Kolbjorn.Aambo@ub.uio.no (Kolbjørn Aambø): >The signes, sizes and Endianness of Shunks: >------------------------------------------- >Since Size and Signes of chars, Sizes of Integers and the fact that a >shunk is Little or Big-endian is implicit and therefore making a lot of >trouble I would very much like to know why this is not made explicit! >Why not make such information explicit? >Little Endian Size64 signed integer i; >Big Endian Size64 unsigned integer j; >Little Endian Unicode character t; >Little Endian Unicode Text ut; >I want this to be part of the standard so I dont have to make a lot of >unneccesary code that is best kept in the compiler! >Computer programming is not a way to employ as many as possible to solve the >same uninteresting problems over and over and over! I agree that the language should solve these problems for you. We plan to support 8,16,32 and 64 buts integers, signed as well as unsigned, but as mentioned in a previous mail, we are not able to give a date for when it is ready. About endianness, I would like to know more about how you think of using your proposal. Do you need to operate on little endian integers on a big endian machine, or do you just need to be able to exchange objects between little- and big-endian machines? The Mjolner Beta System currently has support for persistent objects. One of the strengths of the Mjolner Beta system (as wee see it) is that it has good support for multi-platform support. The new GUI-library is e.g. platform independent in the sense that the code can be easily ported (just a recompilation is needed) between Unix/Motif, Windows 95/NT and Macintosh. We are working on being able to exchange persistent objects between little- and big-endian machines. The objects format is the same for alle machines, except for the endian problem. The compiler generates the necessary information to be used by the persistence library to be able to convert between little and big endian machines. It just need to be used by the persistence library. So my question is: do you need more than being able to exchange persistent objects between litte- and big-endian machines? To further improve support for multi-platform, we are currently working on making the distribution library work in a heterogeneous environment of Unix, Windows 95/Nt and Macintosh computers (i.e. machines with different endians) Finally, you also mention that you would like support for Unicode text. This is of course also something we have on the list. So far it has not been given any high priority, since nobody before you have asked for it. Could you tell us something about the Unicode based tools you are using! I assume that you are using some editors, etc. that can produce Unicode documents? In general we are interesting in knowing how much Unicode is used in practice. Thanks. --olm >-- > Kolbj|rn H. Aamb|, University of Oslo library/Bibliographic dept. > N-0242 Oslo, Norway > kolbjorn.aambo@ub.uio.no > Phone: +47 22 85 91 36 >................................................................ >They brought their books, the natives had their land, then... >they got their land, the natives only books.