Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 00:00:42 06/11/01
Go up one level in this thread
On June 10, 2001 at 18:40:56, Ian Osgood wrote:
>On June 10, 2001 at 14:59:12, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On June 09, 2001 at 13:43:17, Ian Osgood wrote:
>>
>>>Dr. Hyatt let me distribute my port of crafty 18.6 to the PocketPC (only tested
>>>on the Compaq iPAQ) on his FTP site:
>>>
>>>ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/iPAQ/ARMRel/PocketCrafty.exe
>>>ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/iPAQ/install.txt
>>>ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/iPAQ/features.txt
>>>
>>>Later, these will be available here:
>>>
>>>ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/iPAQ/PocketCrafty.exe
>>>ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/iPAQ/PocketCrafty10-src.zip
>>>
>>>I believe this is currently the strongest program you can put in your pocket.
>>>It plays on the FICS account NewtonChess if you want to see how it performs.
>>>
>>>Enjoy!
>>>
>>>Ian
>>
>>
>>
>>Can you tell us about your programming experience on PocketPC?
>>
>>Has it been difficult to port Crafty?
>>
>>I'm planning to port Chess Tiger to PocketPC later this year and I'm interested
>>in hearing about your experience.
>
>You can see for yourself: the code and diffs to the crafty 18.6 source are also
>there in the iPAQ directory. Pretty easy really. Most of the standard ANSI C
>library calls are supported (notable exception: time.h). The bulk of the code I
>wrote was in the GUI; the remainder is in emulate.cpp.
What is emulate.cpp?
I ask because it sounds like you had to rewrite some missing library under
PocketPC.
Actually my first step in porting Chess Tiger to the Palm has been to rewrite a
complete set of what you find generally in STDIO.H, STDLIB.H, TIME.H, IO.H and
other libraries.
I have actually rewritten a whole part of the C standard library which is
missing in PalmOS, including a console mode for the Palm!
It's not that PalmOS is missing all the functions, it's just that they have
other names and behave in a slightly different way. So a standard C program has
no chance to run "as is" under the Palm.
But with my libraries it's a different story. The DOS text mode version of Chess
Tiger worked almost immediately under the Palm once I finished to rewrite the
standard C run-time libraries! And it has been less time consuming than
rewritting Chess Tiger itself.
> Writing the GUI was very
>like writing a simple Windows app. Using MFC also helped, I'm sure.
>
>Of course, it helped that crafty had already been ported to a number of OS's,
>including NT.
>
>>Ahem... And I need to buy a PocketPC computer. I guess everybody would suggest
>>the iPaq is the best?
>
>Well, I like it. :) The main problem (a few months ago at least) was
>availablity. Demand exceeded supply. That's why I got mine on eBay instead of
>through a retailer. You might look into the grayscale version: much cheaper and
>more available. Conventional wisdom would suggest targeting a slower PocketPC,
>so you know that performance is acceptable on the lowest common denominator of
>your market.
If it is about the performances of the engine, I know it will be OK. If it's OK
on the Palm, it cannot be worse on a PocketPC computer.
>Also, if you have Windows 2000 you can run your app in an emulated PocketPC on
>your development computer. This helped me immensely, especially in the early
>development.
That's great. We have this on the Palm too. Running a "virtual Palm" on the PC
is of great help.
> Besides, you are going to need a diverse set of beta-testers since
>there are so many implementations of WinCE out there (a disadvantage compared
>with PalmOS).
That's right.
Did you have to buy the developpement kit for PocketPC, of is it free (like the
developpement tools for Palm are)?
Is the dev kit for PocketPC built on top of the MSVC compiler?
Christophe
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