Hello Syzygy


> Once that's done (if it can ever be said to be done..), I still have
> a Windows version of the software that's been haunting me for the past few
> years. I'm not all that keen on Windows myself, but I have several
> thousand people who have already requested a Windows port of "Digital
> Universe".

Let them wait, there are already *dozens* of PC astronomy programmes. Just
try getting the bloke that does Skymap Pro to do either an Amiga or Mac
port and you get a very emphatic NO and no interest for other platforms at
all. Make the PC blighters buy an Amiga if they want to use Digital
Universe :-P


> Since the Windows version is about 70% completed, I'll probably
> have to finish that up once the current Macintosh rush is done.

Boo hiss boo ! Windows spit spit spit !

> As for a new DU for the next generation of Amiga, I am very excited to see
> what lies in the future for the Amiga, and the potential is definitely
> there. But the bottom line is that before spending any more development
> time (which is always in very short supply) on the Amiga, I'm going to
> have to wait first to see what kind of success the next generation of
> Amiga has in the marketplace.

Are you aware that Amiga are offering support (including I think
fib=nancial) to people wanting to develop for the next Amiga. Try
contacting Fleecy Moss to see if he can help finance a version of DU. It is
in their interest to have a wide software base for the new machine or it
won't sell. See what they say. The next Amiga will need serious scientific
software as much as games or web browsers.


> In the meantime, as you may be aware, any existing owners of DU for the
> Amiga can upgrade to DU for the Mac for half price...


Until Microcode release iFusion I don't think emulating a Mac to run DU is
that good an option. Running the PPC DU code on iFusion would be
worthwhile but the current 68k Mac emulation is not as good as running DU
v1 natively. DU2 may be more colourful and have a few more featurs and the
v1 bugs fixed but is much slower. If you do not currently use the FPU
version of DU then Mac emulation will not be too bad but if you are used to
the FPU Amiga version then the Mac 68k version is slow as it does not use
the FPU.

Dan does not have a 68k Mac, I don't suppose many do these days so the 68k
side was tested by me using Fusion. For some reason though the non-FPU
worked well any FPU version I tried just crashed the Mac and took the Amiga
side down with it :-( So the 68k part of DU does not use an FPU at all. My
fault I suppose ;o)


The classic Amiga version could do with a small amount of work though to fix
a few bugs. For instance that annoying amigaguide library version requester
needs to be removed. OS3.5 and 3.9 versions of the library do whatr Syzygy
intended so there is no need to use the very old version anymore of the
amigaguide.library.

The ecliptic needs to be added. Temporary files used to display data or
hypertext searches get locked if you use DOpus so you can't delete them
from T:

These are not new features but bug fixes which the current Amiga users do
deserve fixes for. We, not Mac users nor PC users, are the ones that bought
DU originally and without our support there would be no DU code to port to
the PC or Mac. We have also input ideas and bug reprts which we may not see
without buying another computer system :-(


Dan, please find some time to at least fix a few bugs and make DU more
runable on modern Amiga systems, there is no longer any need to support old
versions of WB or slow processors.

Alternatively, would it be possible to release the Amiga source code to a
group of DU enthusiasts that could make the necessary changes and even add
some of the features that are currently in the Mac version? Obviously Dan
would want to keep ownership but it may drive the original Miggy version
forward until we get the NG Amiga !



Regards,

Bill.