Linked by diodesign on Mon 21st Jan 2013 22:57 UTC
The lead developer of a niche ARM-powered OS has written a string of in-depth articles on the design, implementation and testing of a commercial operating system. Justin Fletcher was the architect of versions of 4 and 6 of RISC OS, the ARM processor's original operating system. Although his pieces will be best appreciated by RISC OS and Acorn users old and new, the series is a fantastic insight into operating system design: check out his build system for compiling code into ROM images, the abstraction of video graphics from a legacy 1980s-era kernel, converting images on the fly, testing and debugging, executing applications and plenty more. Justin has written tens of thousands of words and will be publishing new pieces daily online and in Android and iOS-friendly formats.
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RE: What's an android/ios-friendly format?
by diodesign on Tue 22nd Jan 2013 10:39
in reply to "What's an android/ios-friendly format?"
Member since:2005-08-04
I'm pretty sure Justin has no intention to do anything like that; it's more about documenting about 10 years of work and getting 100,000 words off his chest. RISC OS does stuff differently to other OSes, so any dev looking for ideas could check it out. It's all online to read as HTML or via Google Currents for free.
Edited 2013-01-22 10:42 UTC
RE[2]: What's an android/ios-friendly format?
by the_randymon on Tue 22nd Jan 2013 14:52
in reply to "RE: What's an android/ios-friendly format?"
Member since:2005-07-06
I just re-read my comment and I see it makes me sound like a bit of a jerk. Way to go, Justin, if he's just publishing HTML then. I am repeatedly annoyed by content that gets wrapped up into an app or some nonsense that makes it hard to read and share.
And the subject matter is interesting too, so I'll be excited to read it. Anything but boring-old-x86 is interesting stuff.
RE: What's an android/ios-friendly format?
by gerph on Tue 22nd Jan 2013 13:05
in reply to "What's an android/ios-friendly format?"
Member since:2013-01-22
Something like HTML and EPUB? It sounds like interesting information, just hoping this doesn't turn into some 'monetization' scheme where you have to download a frikkin' app to get the content.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. The site is just webpages - pretty regular HTML - so I would assume that it's as accessible to Android and iOS devices equally well, although I have neither to test. I believe that plain HTML provides the maximum accessibility for different devices.
As you will see on the site, there is both the web page, the RSS and Atom feeds for summaries, and a 'full text of the last 5 days' RSS feed. Additionally, there's a Google Currents published version of the content at http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAowva34Bg/gerphs_risc_os_r... if you prefer that to RSS feeds.
I have a Kindle version of the rambles, but I shaln't be publishing it until the complete rambles have been published on the site. A Kindle document would fix the version, and I would prefer to have edited everything before it is published in such a way.
RE[2]: What's an android/ios-friendly format?
by henderson101 on Tue 22nd Jan 2013 16:36
in reply to "RE: What's an android/ios-friendly format?"
Member since:2006-05-30
Features
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/16/13 9:29 UTC
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2005-07-06
Something like HTML and EPUB? It sounds like interesting information, just hoping this doesn't turn into some 'monetization' scheme where you have to download a frikkin' app to get the content.