Thinking ahead: Supporting multicore CPUs

unlike OS_HeebieJeebie, which allows you to collect the contents of a directory by remembering some opaque state, performing multiple polls and trusting that things don’t change until you’re done.

You mean like:

  ThisCount = 1
  Entity = Dir(BaseDir & "\*.*")
  Do While (Len(Entity) > 0)
    If (GetAttr(BaseDir & "\" & Entity) And vbDirectory) <> vbDirectory Then
      ' It is a file, deal with it
      ' [...snip...]
    End If ' is NOT a directory
  
    ThisCount = ThisCount + 1
    
    Entity = Dir ' get next file
  Loop

While I believe the state is held in the program’s PSP (DOS) and presumably somewhere in the runtime (Win/VB), we are still looping through reading one entry at a time with no control over when we may be swapped out for a different task.

Another Windows example. The defragger will suspend itself when something writes to the disc. Because… it can’t be helped and you can’t lock the partition(s) that the OS is currently running from – that’s why the full chkdsk scan will often ask you if you want to defer until the next boot time.

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not exactly physically in the same time, but two preempted task could be making use of it’s internal memory structure in a way that could need to be known.

That’s why it’s a CMT system :)

While I believe the state is held in the program’s PSP (DOS) and presumably somewhere in the runtime (Win/VB), we are still looping through reading one entry at a time with no control over when we may be swapped out for a different task.

I believe that’s VB6 unless I’m very much mistaken… MS abandoned that ages ago, and IIRC I specifically wrote “.NET” because no-one sane is writing new stuff in VB6 if they’ve got a choice in the matter.

I was thinking more of something like this (in C#), where we get a one-off array containing all of the files in the directory and then process them at our leisure:

using System.IO;

string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(DirectoryOfInterest);

foreach (string file in files) {
	/* Do something with the file. */
}

I’m sure there’s a VB.NET equivalent, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. :-)

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What runtime does it require? I removed all .Net except 1.x from my computer because I needed the disc space and they weren’t compatible with each other.

Please keep the Zap colour scheme option – some might prefer it to look like it would on RISC OS.

But hey – good job! :-) 😀

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It still pi**e* me off that Acorn, in the middle of Cambridge, should try to show off by Latinizing and yet still get it wrong.
Latin for I die is morior; for you die is morire (singular) and morimini (plural). :(

Maybe morio was their little jest(er)

Did you do something special to have all things aligned properly ?

Yeah, I don’t use a half-assed attempt at a language. :-P

As such I can just Print to the graphic and it appears in the correct place. All the farting around with the position (OldX, OldY) is to be able to draw a rectangle background for specific text (control characters, search matches…).

It’s wonderful the progress, you get 15 lines of code instead of 1, and it’s not even aligned properly lol

Yup. There’s progress for you.

Otherwise there is the ‘odd font’ mode but it’s not very pretty :p

Is isn’t? Looks “odd but more or less okay” (and monospaced) here when setting the font to be Comic Sans MS – it uses the size of “X” to determine width and height. You aren’t really supposed to use OddFont mode – Courier New looks best. The end. ;-)

monospaced

Can’t beat monospaced for regular alignment of columns

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The formatting reads easier on the forum with the use of the “code” tag:

(because of course, you really need 3 coordinate system in visual basic)

Private Function GetPixelsFromPoints(ByVal points As Single, ByVal dpi As Single) As Single Return (dpi * points) / 72 End Function

but stands out with the “pre”

 Private Function GetPixelsFromPoints(ByVal points As Single, ByVal dpi As Single) As Single

Return (dpi * points) / 72

End Function 

instead of basically
print(char)

Are form dimensions still measured in twips? [reads page – oh, so that’s changed too…]

The formatting reads easier on the forum with the use of the “code” tag:

You can do both together:

<pre><code> blah blah blah </code></pre>

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Wimp stay non preempted like it is now
I will do something like a module or some swi that are passed the addressed of a function in application space that will be run as a preempted task

How to plan to pre-empt? Ideally the wimp should handle ALL task swaps else you run the risk of either:
1, having two things handle task switching – could be tricky
Or:
2, your PMT program switches tasks but it yields itself to the wimp for the other tasks – sort of defeats the point
Or:
3, you run a private task switching system independently of the wimp (and perhaps the kernel too) – this would be just pure Epic Fail in a bottle

So. Task switching.
How?

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I have a question about the emulation route that MS and Apple went. Doesn’t that require building a fully functional OS to emulate the old one on top of it? Wouldn’t that be the best way in the long run?

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