Posted by Hans Salvisberg on 2007-06-11 02:27 CET
(In reply to: Want to sell copies of Champ? posted by Christian Klauser on 2007-05-29 01:36 CET)

Again, thank you for your message. Let me address the issues you raise one by one: >> The thing that bugs me, is it's restriction to Borland C++ 4.5x. Ok, it still works but I find it horrible to work with that IDE. It doesn't even have support for mouse wheels... I completely agree with you, that BC45 is an ancient development environment, way behind what current IDEs can offer. >> Now, why am I complaining about Borland C++ 4.52 to you, you might wonder. Because by refusing to rewrite Champ you force hundreds of poor students to work under such unproductive conditions. And I haven't even mentioned the limitations of 16-bit computation... I'm not "refusing" to rewrite Champ, I just don't see anyone who would want to pay for the effort. The Champ library is closely tied to the WIN16 API, and the project manager to Borland C++. Porting Champ to the WIN32 API and the current C++ standard would be a MAJOR undertaking, requiring many months of work. Would you be willing to work for half a year for the prospect of earning a few hundred bucks? >> You wrote: "Yes, I'd still sell Champ licenses, there just aren't that many buyers..." I can tell you why: People don't want to call vendors, beg for item TCB0000WWFS181 and pay over 80 swiss francs for an ancient, unsupported compiler/IDE just to compile 16-bit code. Especially if better compilers and IDEs are available free of charge. I sympathize with what you're saying, but the quote you cite is a gross understatement on my part. The total revenue from Champ licenses has not even covered the cost of writing its documentation. >> One of the best C++ IDEs currently available is Microsofts Visual Studio. And no, I'm not talking about the "Visual" part of VS or VC++ (I don't get the joke myself, to be honest), it's about a modern editor with code completion and a very powerful and easy to use debugger. I agree with you. Many things have happened in the past few years: Borland has dropped the ball on C++, Anders Hejlsberg has moved from Borland to Microsoft, and Visual C++ has finally become both Visual and C++. All versions prior to 2002 definitely weren't Visual (in the sense of Delphi and VisualBasic) nor C++ (in the sense of even trying to approach the official ISO standard), but times have changed. In fact I've started to work with C#, and if I would develop a new Champ today, I would most certainly deliver it as a .NET assembly, as you suggest. However, a new Champ would really have to be a New Champ, because there is no way that Champ could be "ported" to .NET. This would be much more work than rewriting it from scratch. >> But when reading through the sparse forum posts and your hostile attitude towards everything remotely connected to microsoft, I guess that the students of the Gymnasium Bern-Neufeld will continue to be tortured with Borland C++ 4.52 until the school decides to switch to Windows Vista in 5 to 10 years which fortunately does no longer come with a 16-bit subsystem but instead includes the .NET Framework 2.0... This has nothing to do with my attitude or any ill will on my part. I wish I had a solution that would magically get us out of this unfortunate situation, but I don't. If you have an idea, I'm eager to hear it! Best regards, Hans Salvisberg