amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt) (09/04/90)
1. Windows 3.0 uses cooperative multitasking for windows applications. Has anyone figured out how to get away with calling CPU intensive routines in Linpack and Eispack without rewriting them and not creating big gaps in the machine response? There are two objections to rewriting Linpack and Eispack. A. They are in FORTRAN, and make extensive use of multidimensional formal parameters. This is a real problem in C, where you either give up speed by making arrays into vectors of vectors (a la Numerical Recipes) or you go insane using stride into simple vectors. (You will run afoul of aliasing restrictions on compiler optimizations if you try to make this approach even remotely humane.) B. The rewriting of Linpack and Eispack is one of the few cases where you shouldn't write your own code. This stuff has been tested and used for many years now by the greater part of the numerical analysis profession and many attempts to rewrite, port, or otherwise tweak this code have produced substandard results. The officially sanctioned rewriting of Linpack and Eispack (the LA project) is writing the code for vector and parallel processing, and will not (as far as I know) help with sticking these things in Windows apps. Yes, people have put these into Mac applications, but as everyone knows they run slower than constipation in February on Macs. This would be a nice situation to avoid. 2. Why does Windows support a subset character set? This seems just out and out stupid to me. Does this mean that even if I create the appropriate APL font that many Windows apps (notepad, etc.) will not be able to use it? Under what circumstances would anyone writing a GUI think that a limited character set was a good idea? 3. How do I get high speed (56K and 110K baud) serial communications in a Windows App? Solution must work in same application as previous two... Later, Andrew Mullhaupt P.S. only 4 more months until DesqView/X.
spolsky-joel@cs.yale.edu (Joel Spolsky) (09/04/90)
In article <1614@s6.Morgan.COM> amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt) writes: > >2. Why does Windows support a subset character set? This seems just >out and out stupid to me. Does this mean that even if I create the >appropriate APL font that many Windows apps (notepad, etc.) will >not be able to use it? Under what circumstances would anyone writing >a GUI think that a limited character set was a good idea? > Windows doesn't support a subset character set; it supports the ANSI character set. It provides functions like OEMToAnsi and AnsiToOEM that translate between the ANSI character set and the OEM character set that is native to the computer upon which you are running windows. It is just a coincidence that every computer that runs Windows uses the IBM extended character set. Many foreign countries use different OEM character sets. You can create an APL font and use it; however you probably don't want to use it as the system font (which is what Notepad uses) because your menus and dialogs will look a bit funny :-) Joel Spolsky spolsky@cs.yale.edu Talk Hard.
pbalaji@synoptics.COM (Balaji Pitchaikani) (09/04/90)
In article <1614@s6.Morgan.COM> amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt) writes: >1. Windows 3.0 uses cooperative multitasking for windows applications. >Has anyone figured out how to get away with calling CPU intensive >routines in Linpack and Eispack without rewriting them and not >creating big gaps in the machine response? I use PeekMessage() in a situation like yours. But I am not sure though as to how the response will be. >Andrew Mullhaupt balaji (pbalaji@mvis1.synoptics.com)