Yes I checked the charters and I don't believe this is in breach.

Basically following recent discussions on alt.machines.cnc and
rec.crafts.metalworking it became apparent to me that there is a lot of
interest in the Open Source aspect of CNC in general, but no real
central repository of information.

Yes there are specific websites such as LinuxCNC org, but that won't
help you with finding ballscrews locally for your own CNC project, or
help you with a specific G code problem, or suchlike.

So, I have today registered http://www.open-source-cnc.com/ and it is
now up and live in a very basic form, work very much in progress, but
there is enough there to register as a user and most importantly
participate. Yes folks, this is not a site about me, but about CNC so
it needs users but most importantly in the early days it needs
moderators and admins.

If you feel you fit the bill then drop me a line, ideally sign up as a
member first, then tell me what thankless task you're up for, so I can
simply click a button and make it so. NB I don't care who you are, only
if you can do the necessary, so if you flamed me or agreed with me on a
thread somewhere that makes no difference.

Note well, this site is based on OPEN SOURCE, not profit, proprietary
systems, lock in, or any such, and that applies to the site too, so
there is no way in hell there is ever going to be commercial influences
such as selling the user database, biased articles or content, or god
forbid bloody adverts cluttering up the site. As far as privacy goes
the site uses cookies, and that's it, they just exist for the user
login / personal preferences thing.

I don't have any specific visions about what it should become, it could
die of lack of interest, or it could become whatever the users decide
they need, I don't mind, I have no agenda.

Anyway, that's about the size of it, if this wasted your bandwidth then
apologies, if not then hope to see you soon.

Just time to sign off with a happy and prosperous 2006 to you all.

According to Guy Fawkes :
Yes I checked the charters and I don't believe this is in breach.

Basically following recent discussions on alt.machines.cnc and
rec.crafts.metalworking it became apparent to me that there is a lot of
interest in the Open Source aspect of CNC in general, but no real
central repository of information.

Yes there are specific websites such as LinuxCNC org, but that won't
help you with finding ballscrews locally for your own CNC project, or
help you with a specific G code problem, or suchlike.

So, I have today registered http://www.open-source-cnc.com/ and it is
now up and live in a very basic form, work very much in progress, but

[ ... ]

Note well, this site is based on OPEN SOURCE, not profit, proprietary
systems, lock in, or any such, and that applies to the site too, so
there is no way in hell there is ever going to be commercial influences
such as selling the user database, biased articles or content, or god
forbid bloody adverts cluttering up the site. As far as privacy goes
the site uses cookies, and that's it, they just exist for the user
login / personal preferences thing.

So -- if you are basing it on open source software, why are you
requiring a *proprietary* archive format, RAR? I had to do a Google
search to even find out what it is, and it appears to originate in the
Windows world.

I've found free downloads of compiled object code for both
Solaris 10 and OpenBSD, but no source code -- totally at odds with the
Open Source goal which you have stated.

And those free downloads are only for programs to *extract* the
files, not to *create* them, so you are requiring people to buy software
to contribute to an open source site? I see no mention of any other
formats being acceptable.

What is wrong with tar? That is pretty freely available source,
and works well with the linux machines on which a lot of the open source
CNC machines are hosted.

Just some first-glance impressions.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:

So -- if you are basing it on open source software, why are you
requiring a *proprietary* archive format, RAR? I had to do a Google
search to even find out what it is, and it appears to originate in the
Windows world.

see, that's PRECISELY why the open source ethos works so well.... the
consensus view wins and many eyes see all the problems quickly.

I also say nothing is written in stone, so you've proposed tar I
believe? if a consensus follows around that archive format, or indeed
around 3 or 4 basic ones, it's not the slightest problem to make that
happen.

I feel a poll coming on, see the site.... poll now on home page on the
right


cheers

Guy Fawkes wrote:

Yes I checked the charters and I don't believe this is in breach.

Basically following recent discussions on alt.machines.cnc and
rec.crafts.metalworking it became apparent to me that there is a lot of
interest in the Open Source aspect of CNC in general, but no real
central repository of information.

Yes there are specific websites such as LinuxCNC org, but that won't
help you with finding ballscrews locally for your own CNC project, or
help you with a specific G code problem, or suchlike.

So, I have today registered http://www.open-source-cnc.com/ and it is
now up and live in a very basic form, work very much in progress, but
there is enough there to register as a user and most importantly
participate. Yes folks, this is not a site about me, but about CNC so
it needs users but most importantly in the early days it needs
moderators and admins.

If you feel you fit the bill then drop me a line, ideally sign up as a
member first, then tell me what thankless task you're up for, so I can
simply click a button and make it so. NB I don't care who you are, only
if you can do the necessary, so if you flamed me or agreed with me on a
thread somewhere that makes no difference.

Note well, this site is based on OPEN SOURCE, not profit, proprietary
systems, lock in, or any such, and that applies to the site too, so
there is no way in hell there is ever going to be commercial influences
such as selling the user database, biased articles or content, or god
forbid bloody adverts cluttering up the site. As far as privacy goes
the site uses cookies, and that's it, they just exist for the user
login / personal preferences thing.

I don't have any specific visions about what it should become, it could
die of lack of interest, or it could become whatever the users decide
they need, I don't mind, I have no agenda.

Anyway, that's about the size of it, if this wasted your bandwidth then
apologies, if not then hope to see you soon.

Just time to sign off with a happy and prosperous 2006 to you all.

Perhaps you haven't looked at http://www.cnczone.com that site pretty
well covers the spectrum of CNC from homebuilt to commercial.

Pete C.

According to Guy Fawkes :

DoN. Nichols wrote:

So -- if you are basing it on open source software, why are you
requiring a *proprietary* archive format, RAR? I had to do a Google
search to even find out what it is, and it appears to originate in the
Windows world.

see, that's PRECISELY why the open source ethos works so well.... the
consensus view wins and many eyes see all the problems quickly.

I also say nothing is written in stone, so you've proposed tar I
believe? if a consensus follows around that archive format, or indeed
around 3 or 4 basic ones, it's not the slightest problem to make that
happen.

I feel a poll coming on, see the site.... poll now on home page on the
right

Hmm ... some comments on the poll and its choices -- aside from
it apparently requiring registration and login, which I normally avoid
if possible (Obviously, I would have to register and login if I wanted
to submit something, but while browsing a site, I tend to opt to not
register.):

1) tar, alone, builds archives (collections of files in a single
file), but has no compression.

2) gzip (GNU zip) is compression *only*, of a single file at a
time.

3) So -- a combination of tar and gzip will produce a compressed
file holding many files. (And, it can be done with a "-z"
option to GNU's version of tar, for convenience.) This
combination is so common, that it has acquired its own name. It
is called a "tarball".

4) An alternative compression format, "bzip2", can offer slightly
greater compression, and can be invoked by the option "-j" fed
to GNU's tar instead of "-z".

gzip is more commonly found, so it would probably be the best
combined with tar if only a single format were to be used.

So -- your survey needs "combinations of ..." as well as "a
choice of".

5) A choice is common on many source archive sites -- tar combined
with gzip and tar combined with bzip2 being the most common for
unix sources.

"Uncompressed" tends to be infrequently used -- usually for the
sources for the compression programs (like gzip) themselves.
These tend to be small programs, so the extra system load for
the downloading is relatively minor. For large program suites,
such as EMC, compressed versions should be all that is
available. (Set a size limitation above which compression is
mandatory.)

Perhaps add a choice of something common in Windows which does
not require proprietary software to create on unix systems. A
version of "zip" is frequently found on modern unix systems, and
is in freely available source format as well.

Ideally -- you should have links to the open source code sites
for each *required* format, so nobody is forced to buy a package
(like RAR) to submit a program.

6) Perhaps have an option to submit in one of several formats, and
scripts on the site to expand these and then re-join them using
the other formats?

7) ARJ and ACE are two others with which I am not familiar. I
don't think that I will bother with a Google search on those at
this time, however.

8) While we're about it -- documentation should avoid proprietary
formats, such as Microsoft Word. Plain ASCII is a good choice,
or if you need something with fancy formatting, make it PDF
format. (Yes, I know that you have to pay Adobe to have their
program able to create PDF files -- but we've got other options
as well for that, since Ghostscript can also create PDF files,
and that is available in Open Source form.

Just some thoughts.

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 31 Dec 2005 16:09:09 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm, "Guy
Fawkes" quickly quoth:


DoN. Nichols wrote:

So -- if you are basing it on open source software, why are you
requiring a *proprietary* archive format, RAR? I had to do a Google
search to even find out what it is, and it appears to originate in the
Windows world.

see, that's PRECISELY why the open source ethos works so well.... the
consensus view wins and many eyes see all the problems quickly.

I also say nothing is written in stone, so you've proposed tar I
believe? if a consensus follows around that archive format, or indeed
around 3 or 4 basic ones, it's not the slightest problem to make that
happen.

I feel a poll coming on, see the site.... poll now on home page on the
right

Now program/link it so it's -live, not just text and graphics, Guy.

Put me down for 2-3 options, ZIP and GZ.


================================================== =========
Save the Endangered Bouillons from being cubed!
http://www.diversify.com/stees.html Hilarious T-shirts online
================================================== =========

DoN. Nichols wrote:

According to Guy Fawkes :

DoN. Nichols wrote:


So -- if you are basing it on open source software, why are you
requiring a *proprietary* archive format, RAR? I had to do a Google
search to even find out what it is, and it appears to originate in the
Windows world.

see, that's PRECISELY why the open source ethos works so well.... the
consensus view wins and many eyes see all the problems quickly.

I also say nothing is written in stone, so you've proposed tar I
believe? if a consensus follows around that archive format, or indeed
around 3 or 4 basic ones, it's not the slightest problem to make that
happen.

I feel a poll coming on, see the site.... poll now on home page on the
right


Hmm ... some comments on the poll and its choices -- aside from
it apparently requiring registration and login, which I normally avoid

Give it a couple of years and they'll agree a file format. Next will
come the tricky decision on what the logo should be.

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 02:39:19 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

2) gzip (GNU zip) is compression *only*, of a single file at a
time.

That file can be a tar file.
--
Cliff

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 02:39:19 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

gzip (GNU zip)

There are also UNIX utilities compact & compress. Are they on Linux?
I'd sort of expect so but .... IIRC compact may have problems with
largish files ( ~ 1MB).
--
Cliff

Pete C. wrote:

Perhaps you haven't looked at http://www.cnczone.com that site pretty
well covers the spectrum of CNC from homebuilt to commercial.

littered with adverts and promotional material and more particularly it
doesn't specialise in open source.

DoN. Nichols wrote:

Hmm ... some comments on the poll and its choices -- aside from
it apparently requiring registration and login, which I normally avoid
if possible (Obviously, I would have to register and login if I wanted
to submit something, but while browsing a site, I tend to opt to not
register.):

participants get a vote, it's just a filter.



5) A choice is common on many source archive sites -- tar combined
with gzip and tar combined with bzip2 being the most common for
unix sources.

I'd put money on this coming out in a week or so



8) While we're about it -- documentation should avoid proprietary
formats, such as Microsoft Word. Plain ASCII is a good choice,
or if you need something with fancy formatting, make it PDF
format. (Yes, I know that you have to pay Adobe to have their
program able to create PDF files -- but we've got other options
as well for that, since Ghostscript can also create PDF files,
and that is available in Open Source form.

Good point, noted.

cheers

On 1 Jan 2006 00:24:13 -0800, "Guy Fawkes"
wrote:

Pete C. wrote:

Perhaps you haven't looked at http://www.cnczone.com that site pretty
well covers the spectrum of CNC from homebuilt to commercial.

littered with adverts and promotional material and more particularly it
doesn't specialise in open source.

Perhaps script kiddies too, loading it with useless graphics.

Poor jb has no idea who I am there though G.

One of the problems with BBS systems is that they get
overloaded with the old stuff you have to page thru ....
Another is that they die on the whims of their managers.
Another is that posts can be altered.
OTOH That does lose some priceless rants from jb, usually.
--
Cliff

Fantastic idea and more importantly follow-through. Already book
marked.

What are the top ten needs/wants?

What is the programming language of choice? I am assuming c++ or
java for cross-platform compiling, but?

A happy and prosperous 2006 for you also.

Uncle George

==========================


On 31 Dec 2005 14:10:30 -0800, "Guy Fawkes"
wrote:

Yes I checked the charters and I don't believe this is in breach.

Basically following recent discussions on alt.machines.cnc and
rec.crafts.metalworking it became apparent to me that there is a lot of
interest in the Open Source aspect of CNC in general, but no real
central repository of information.

Yes there are specific websites such as LinuxCNC org, but that won't
help you with finding ballscrews locally for your own CNC project, or
help you with a specific G code problem, or suchlike.

So, I have today registered http://www.open-source-cnc.com/ and it is
now up and live in a very basic form, work very much in progress, but
there is enough there to register as a user and most importantly
participate. Yes folks, this is not a site about me, but about CNC so
it needs users but most importantly in the early days it needs
moderators and admins.

If you feel you fit the bill then drop me a line, ideally sign up as a
member first, then tell me what thankless task you're up for, so I can
simply click a button and make it so. NB I don't care who you are, only
if you can do the necessary, so if you flamed me or agreed with me on a
thread somewhere that makes no difference.

Note well, this site is based on OPEN SOURCE, not profit, proprietary
systems, lock in, or any such, and that applies to the site too, so
there is no way in hell there is ever going to be commercial influences
such as selling the user database, biased articles or content, or god
forbid bloody adverts cluttering up the site. As far as privacy goes
the site uses cookies, and that's it, they just exist for the user
login / personal preferences thing.

I don't have any specific visions about what it should become, it could
die of lack of interest, or it could become whatever the users decide
they need, I don't mind, I have no agenda.

Anyway, that's about the size of it, if this wasted your bandwidth then
apologies, if not then hope to see you soon.

Just time to sign off with a happy and prosperous 2006 to you all.

On Sun, 01 Jan, F George McDuffee wrote:
Fantastic idea and more importantly follow-through. Already book
marked.

What are the top ten needs/wants?

What is the programming language of choice? I am assuming c++ or
java for cross-platform compiling, but?

Java? Man, I hope not. C++ is almost acceptable, but I would think C,
python, or perl would be most widely accepted.


--Donnie

--
Donnie Barnes http://www.donniebarnes.com 879. V.

According to Cliff :
On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 02:39:19 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

2) gzip (GNU zip) is compression *only*, of a single file at a
time.

That file can be a tar file.

As I indicated a bit farther down -- that combinations of the
protocols would work nicely.

DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

According to Cliff :
On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 02:39:19 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

gzip (GNU zip)

There are also UNIX utilities compact & compress. Are they on Linux?
I'd sort of expect so but .... IIRC compact may have problems with
largish files ( ~ 1MB).

Compress (based on the Lempel-Ziv algorithm) had fallen out of
favor because the algorithm was patented, and the holder of the patent
(Unisys) was insisting on charging royalties for any use of it (after it
had been open source for a time) -- with no exceptions for open-source
freely-distributed programs. I *think* that the patent has now expired,
so it is freely available again, but gzip and bzip2 are so much more
efficient that there seems to be little likelihood that the older
compress will come back into common usage.

I note that it does come with Sun's Solaris -- at least from
SunOs 4.1.4 all the way up to Solaris 10. (Though I remember the days
when I had to compile it to use it.)

As for "compact" -- that may be truly antique, as I don't have
any examples of it.

The first three pages of Google hits for "compact program
source" offered nothing of any apparent relevance.

I do remember one program which I got from the OS-9 user's group
library (Microware's OS-9, not the recent Macintosh one) which was a bit
more configurable than most -- and as a result, it was the only one
which worked on a BBN C70 (mostly v7 unix like), because that machine
had 10-bit bytes, 20-bit words, and 40-bit longs. While "compress"
worked well enough on plain text files, it totally blew up on binaries.

This program, however, could be configured to the byte size, so
it worked quite well on that system.

Enjoy,
DoN.

P.S. I may not see your replies, because I normally have you
killfiled to keep away from the political discussions. I
happened to follow a couple of thread branches into your
comments (which were marked as already read, but I knew that I
had *not* read them, just to see what they contained.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

According to F. George McDuffee :
Fantastic idea and more importantly follow-through. Already book
marked.

What are the top ten needs/wants?

Good CAD/CAM packages in the open source world. Commercial
packages have an extreme price for unix systems compared to windows.
There are reasonable CAD packages, but the companion CAM, for converting
the drawing files into G-code seems to be harder to come by.

What is the programming language of choice? I am assuming c++ or
java for cross-platform compiling, but?

My own preference is plain c, not c++, and not java. (Java may
have freely downloadable source (after signing up with Sun), but it is
not Open Source -- Sun keeps tight rein on it.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

According to Donnie Barnes :
On Sun, 01 Jan, F George McDuffee wrote:
Fantastic idea and more importantly follow-through. Already book
marked.

What are the top ten needs/wants?

What is the programming language of choice? I am assuming c++ or
java for cross-platform compiling, but?

Java? Man, I hope not. C++ is almost acceptable, but I would think C,
python, or perl would be most widely accepted.

For some things, perl is not bad -- but it has the disadvantage
of being an interpreted language, so slow for large tasks compared to a
truly compiled program.

I've never done anything in python, so I can't speak to that.

But -- I do use C quite a bit, and have for many years.

If you really want to push the envelope, try Ada, which is now
available as part of the gcc package. I've never done anything in it,
nor have I gotten the necessary tools to compile that part of the gcc
package, but I would consider it a step up from C++.

For math-intensive work, something like APL, but I think that
would be awkward for most of what would be done relative to CNC work.
And -- it is a pain to compile and install on most systems, thanks to
its required weird character set.

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
According to F. George McDuffee :
Fantastic idea and more importantly follow-through. Already book
marked.

What are the top ten needs/wants?

Good CAD/CAM packages in the open source world. Commercial
packages have an extreme price for unix systems compared to windows.
There are reasonable CAD packages, but the companion CAM, for converting
the drawing files into G-code seems to be harder to come by.

http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html

http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html

http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/UTILlinks.html

and
http://www.opencascade.org/getocc/download/

On Sun, 01 Jan, DoN. Nichols wrote:
For some things, perl is not bad -- but it has the disadvantage
of being an interpreted language, so slow for large tasks compared to a
truly compiled program.

I've never done anything in python, so I can't speak to that.

Both are great options for a lot of smaller programs, like simple things
that generate g-code to do basic but repetitive operations that might just
have different dimensions. Python can even be good for slightly larger
programs that require a GUI (or not). If memory serves it gets
byte-compiled and thus is only really "interpreted" the first time you run
it, and from then on is pretty fast. Certainly not C fast, but...

But -- I do use C quite a bit, and have for many years.

Certainly the single best option for larger programs, I think.

If you really want to push the envelope, try Ada, which is now
available as part of the gcc package. I've never done anything in it,
nor have I gotten the necessary tools to compile that part of the gcc
package, but I would consider it a step up from C++.

Agreed. But then again, I'd agree anything is a step up from C++. :-)

For math-intensive work, something like APL, but I think that
would be awkward for most of what would be done relative to CNC work.
And -- it is a pain to compile and install on most systems, thanks to
its required weird character set.

Yep. C. Just do C. You can't go wrong with C. Did I mention C? C is
good. :-)


--Donnie

--
Donnie Barnes http://www.donniebarnes.com 879. V.

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 21:49:23 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

As for "compact" -- that may be truly antique, as I don't have
any examples of it.

Check HP-UX, probably among others.
"The command compact of UNIX implements the dynamic Huffman coding"

http://docs.hp.com/en/B9106-90007/compact.1.html

BTW, Compress & Gzip seem to get about the same compression
ratios, at least on the binary files I once tested such on. IIRC
Gzip *may* have been slightly faster in execution one way
(comressing) and slower the other (uncompressing).
--
Cliff

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 22:01:27 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

For math-intensive work, something like APL,

[
There are three things a man must do
Before his life is done;
Write two lines in APL,
And make the buggers run.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary, 1981
]

Also see http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/p/prog.htm
--
Cliff

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 22:01:27 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

If you really want to push the envelope, try Ada,

[
on the design of Ada:
The mistakes which have been made in the last twenty years [of
designing large overly-complex languages] are being repeated today on
an even grander scale.
....
Gadgets and glitter prevail over fundamental concerns of safety and
economy.
-- C. A. R. Hoare, "The Emperor's Old Clothes", CACM 24(2), 1981
]
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/p/prog.htm
--
Cliff

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 21:55:52 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

Commercial
packages have an extreme price for unix systems compared to windows.

AFAIK The price does not depend on the OS you choose
to use, when you have options.
RISC hardware of the same clock speed may cost more then
CISC theses days though, if available.
--
Cliff

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 21:55:52 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

(Java may
have freely downloadable source (after signing up with Sun), but it is
not Open Source -- Sun keeps tight rein on it.

The source may well be freely available. Pretty much
has to be for it to work as intended.
You just don't get to change it and say it's yours,
as MS tried to.

[
SUN MICROSYSTEMS SUES ISLAND OF JAVA*

Mountain View, CA -- Sun Microsystems today filed a trademark
infringement against the island of Java* over the use of Sun's
Java* trademark.

Responding to criticism that the island has been called Java* for
centuries, Sun lawyer Frank Cheatham said "Yeah, and in all that
time they never filed for a trademark. They deserve to lose the
name."

Rather than pay the licensing fee, the island decided to change
its name. They originally voted to change it to Visu Albasic, but
an angry telegram from Redmond, Washington convinced them otherwise.
The country finally settled on a symbol for a name -- a neatly-colored
coffee cup which still evokes the idea of java. Since most
newspapers and magazines will not be able to print the name of the
island, it will hereafter be referred to in print as "The Island
Formerly Known As Java*".

The Island Formerly Known As Java* bills itself as a cross-landmass
island, but so far has only been implemented in production on the
Malay Archipelago. Africa is been rumored to have implemented it
on Madagascar, but it is still in alpha testing.

Lawyers from Sun would also like to locate the owners of the huge
fiery ball at the center of the solar system. They have some legal
papers for them...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

*Java is a Trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Anyone caught using the
trademark without permission will be beaten, flogged, sued, and
forced
to use Microsoft products.
]

[
Nuclear warhead guidance in java.

This is an extract from the Windows NT license agreement...
(there wasn't any copyright on the license agreement...)

[...]

7. NOTE ON JAVA SUPPORT. THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT CONTAINS SUPPORT FOR
PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN JAVA. JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND
IS
NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ON-LINE
CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE
PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT
NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE
SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS
SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY
TO
DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

[...]

Damn! And I was so looking forward to managing my nuclear arsenal
with Java....
]
--
Cliff

In article rs.com,
(DoN. Nichols) wrote:

According to Guy Fawkes :

DoN. Nichols wrote:

So -- if you are basing it on open source software, why are you
requiring a *proprietary* archive format, RAR? I had to do a Google
search to even find out what it is, and it appears to originate in the
Windows world.

I would suggest that all core choices be supported on all three major
platforms, Windows, MacOS, and Linux/UNIX. This rule ensures wide
support, and pretty much precludes proprietary lock-in.

In the Windows worlds, it's pretty easy to accidentally become
windows-dependent, and be trapped in the Windows Upgrade Treadmill.
Requiring demonstrated support for at least one of the the other two
platforms prevents accidental addiction. ActiveX controls are a
particular danger.

Avoiding the treadmill is another big reason to stick with plain old ISO
C.


see, that's PRECISELY why the open source ethos works so well.... the
consensus view wins and many eyes see all the problems quickly.

I also say nothing is written in stone, so you've proposed tar I
believe? if a consensus follows around that archive format, or indeed
around 3 or 4 basic ones, it's not the slightest problem to make that
happen.

I feel a poll coming on, see the site.... poll now on home page on the
right

Hmm ... some comments on the poll and its choices -- aside from
it apparently requiring registration and login, which I normally avoid
if possible (Obviously, I would have to register and login if I wanted
to submit something, but while browsing a site, I tend to opt to not
register.):

I agree. If I register, then more junk mail is likely. As if we don't
already get enough junk mail.


[snip]
Perhaps add a choice of something common in Windows which does
not require proprietary software to create on unix systems. A
version of "zip" is frequently found on modern unix systems, and
is in freely available source format as well.

Works on MacOS too.


Ideally -- you should have links to the open source code sites
for each *required* format, so nobody is forced to buy a package
(like RAR) to submit a program.

6) Perhaps have an option to submit in one of several formats, and
scripts on the site to expand these and then re-join them using
the other formats?

7) ARJ and ACE are two others with which I am not familiar. I
don't think that I will bother with a Google search on those at
this time, however.

Aside from problems with proprietary lock-in, there is the problem with
formats becoming obsolete and becoming orphans, so the core formats
should be both open and widely used for decades, with a large enough
user base to ensure perpetual support, whatever the fortunes of the
current supporting entities.


8) While we're about it -- documentation should avoid proprietary
formats, such as Microsoft Word. Plain ASCII is a good choice,
or if you need something with fancy formatting, make it PDF
format. (Yes, I know that you have to pay Adobe to have their
program able to create PDF files -- but we've got other options
as well for that, since Ghostscript can also create PDF files,
and that is available in Open Source form.

Although pdf is proprietary, it is documented. Adobe publishes the full
file format in a widely available book, allowing widespread 3rd-party
support. So, documents prepared using even Word and then converted to
pdf will be understandable forever, even if both MS and Adobe were to
vanish. The problem occurs when one wants to update the original
document, although there are tools to go from PDF to MS Word.

The problem is that plain ASCII doesn't do drawings very well, so
someone's drawing package will be needed.

Nor does ascii do justice to mathematical equations. Internet RFCs are
all plain ascii, except for RFC-1305 (NTPv3). The reason that 1305 was
given an exemption was that there was no way to render the equations in
ascii.

Joe Gwinn

Sheesh
Go to NIST.
Get one of the IGES "viewers". IIRC Source is
freely available for some.
Start out using IGES as your part file database.

This would at least assure that your parts are 100% IGES
compatable G. And open with other systems that support IGES
(mostly).
Half the work done in defining entity data & records too.

Then you could get APT source to do the CAM bits,
as a starting point .... G.

BIG Clue #1: If it's NOT 5 axes to begin with you are
already up the creek. Making 2 or 3 axes stuff is *EASY*
but making that 5 axes later is not. Making 5 axes do only
2 or 3 is simple (they are a subset).
--
Cliff

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article rs.com,
(DoN. Nichols) wrote:

Hmm ... some comments on the poll and its choices -- aside from
it apparently requiring registration and login, which I normally avoid
if possible (Obviously, I would have to register and login if I wanted
to submit something, but while browsing a site, I tend to opt to not
register.):

I agree. If I register, then more junk mail is likely. As if we don't
already get enough junk mail.

No way, no how, no chance.

I BLOODY HATE sites that force you to register, THEN use the mere
posession of your email address as implied permission to send you crap
promo emails every week.

There is NO WAY IN HELL www.open-source-cnc.com is going to mail
anyone, except in the following specific circumstances.

1/ you ELECT to be notified by email if a thread of the forums you're
watching has a follow up.

2/ you ELECT to sign up for the newsletter as/when/if it is implemented

3/ the admins think there is a REALLY good reason to notify all users
of something, off hand, since the site doesn't do e-commerce and so
cannot be holding anything like credit card or social security numbers,
I can't think of a single reason that qualifies.

For the record, I was a long time subscriber to NANAE and NANAU, ran my
own servers etc, was involved in the anti spam game, and can guarantee
the only mail anyone is going to get is mail they want, proper genuine
requested mails, no spammer lies / doublespeak about opt-in, double
optin etc

hope this clears that point up, if it doesn't, ask away, no secrets
here.

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 18:34:18 -0500, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

So, documents prepared using even Word and then converted to
pdf will be understandable forever

Don't count on it.
--
Cliff

On Sun, 01 Jan, Cliff wrote:
As for "compact" -- that may be truly antique, as I don't have
any examples of it.

Check HP-UX, probably among others.
"The command compact of UNIX implements the dynamic Huffman coding"

http://docs.hp.com/en/B9106-90007/compact.1.html

While it may exist somewhere, it's not ubiquitous enough to be useful any
longer.

BTW, Compress & Gzip seem to get about the same compression
ratios, at least on the binary files I once tested such on. IIRC
Gzip *may* have been slightly faster in execution one way
(comressing) and slower the other (uncompressing).

That's not at all the way I recall. gzip was better than compress on
Ultrix, I believe, by a noticeable percentage.

It's all moot, IMHO. Neither compact or compress exist on nearly as many
systems as gzip. Game, set, match. Many sites also provide bzip2
compressed files for download alongside gzip files because for large files,
bzip2 can be a good bit smaller, which can be important to overall download
times. But it's not ubiquitous enough to be the only way you provide
something, either.


--Donnie

--
Donnie Barnes http://www.donniebarnes.com 879. V.

On Mon, 02 Jan, Cliff wrote:
On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 18:34:18 -0500, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

So, documents prepared using even Word and then converted to
pdf will be understandable forever

Don't count on it.

And in the open source world it's not enough to be able to understand the
document forever, it's a requirement to be able to *edit* it forever.
That's why the system generating the document needs to be open source as
well. It's fine to generate PDF and HTML and whatever formats you want
from that, but it needs to be editable for all time, too.


--Donnie

--
Donnie Barnes http://www.donniebarnes.com 879. V.

According to Cliff :
On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 21:49:23 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:

As for "compact" -- that may be truly antique, as I don't have
any examples of it.

Check HP-UX, probably among others.
"The command compact of UNIX implements the dynamic Huffman coding"

http://docs.hp.com/en/B9106-90007/compact.1.html

Hmm ... pretty old program, if the man page is still concerned
about filesystems which limit filenames to 14 characters (the old
filesystem which came with v7 unix, and early SysV variants as well.

I'm somewhat frustrated by the HP-UX (or the web page format)
eliminating the "Last change: 9 Sep 1999" entry at the bottom of each
page, which might make it easier to judge just how old compact(1)
happens to be. That one was from Solaris 10. Solaris 2.6 shows: "Last
change: 20 Dec 1996" Falling back to SunOs 4.1.4, I get: "Last change: 9
September 1987" and OpenBSD shows it as: "April 18, 1994". Of course,
those dates apply to the last change of the man page, not the program,
but at least some of the changes of the man page are to reflect changes
in the program.

BTW, Compress & Gzip seem to get about the same compression
ratios, at least on the binary files I once tested such on. IIRC
Gzip *may* have been slightly faster in execution one way
(comressing) and slower the other (uncompressing).

I've seen gzip(1) usually giving a significant improvement over
compress(1) on most file types -- at least on SunOs and Solaris (even on
the Sun-3 (68020) machines).

DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

According to Joseph Gwinn :

[ ... ]

In the Windows worlds, it's pretty easy to accidentally become
windows-dependent, and be trapped in the Windows Upgrade Treadmill.
Requiring demonstrated support for at least one of the the other two
platforms prevents accidental addiction. ActiveX controls are a
particular danger.

One of the entry points for viruses. And *certainly* not
supported on other OSs -- thank goodness. :-)

Avoiding the treadmill is another big reason to stick with plain old ISO
C.

Agreed.

[ ... ]

[snip]
Perhaps add a choice of something common in Windows which does
not require proprietary software to create on unix systems. A
version of "zip" is frequently found on modern unix systems, and
is in freely available source format as well.

Works on MacOS too.

Of course, the current MacOS (OS-X) is layered on top of a unix
kernel, so you should be able to pick up the unix utilities which don't
happen to have been included and compile them with no serious problems,
as long as you don't mind working at the command-line level.

[ ... ]

7) ARJ and ACE are two others with which I am not familiar. I
don't think that I will bother with a Google search on those at
this time, however.

Aside from problems with proprietary lock-in, there is the problem with
formats becoming obsolete and becoming orphans, so the core formats
should be both open and widely used for decades, with a large enough
user base to ensure perpetual support, whatever the fortunes of the
current supporting entities.

Agreed! And ones which are open source means that you can keep
them alive long after they have been abandoned by others, should it
become necessary.

8) While we're about it -- documentation should avoid proprietary
formats, such as Microsoft Word. Plain ASCII is a good choice,
or if you need something with fancy formatting, make it PDF
format. (Yes, I know that you have to pay Adobe to have their
program able to create PDF files -- but we've got other options
as well for that, since Ghostscript can also create PDF files,
and that is available in Open Source form.

Although pdf is proprietary, it is documented.

Which is why ghostscript's companion shell script ps2pdf(1) was
possible. No reverse engineering needed.

And -- there is xpdf(1) (for unix systems running X11), also
open source. I tend to use it by preference to Adobe Acrobat reader.

Adobe publishes the full
file format in a widely available book, allowing widespread 3rd-party
support. So, documents prepared using even Word and then converted to
pdf will be understandable forever, even if both MS and Adobe were to
vanish. The problem occurs when one wants to update the original
document, although there are tools to go from PDF to MS Word.

The problem is that plain ASCII doesn't do drawings very well, so
someone's drawing package will be needed.

Agreed. Note that programs like xfig(1) (again open source) can
generate the input to troff/groff source files to print drawings (using
the pic macro sets). And, they can print to PostScript, which can then
be translated to pdf by ps2pdf(1) from ghostscript.

Nor does ascii do justice to mathematical equations. Internet RFCs are
all plain ascii, except for RFC-1305 (NTPv3). The reason that 1305 was
given an exemption was that there was no way to render the equations in
ascii.

Note that the eqn macro set for troff/groff can do a very nice
job of typesetting math, which (as above) can be converted to
PostSCript, and from there to PDF.

And -- ghostscript(1) is open source (from GNU), so again it is
possible to maintain if needed. We are not at the mercy of a single OS
continuing to operate.

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

According to Guy Fawkes :

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

I agree. If I register, then more junk mail is likely. As if we don't
already get enough junk mail.

No way, no how, no chance.

I BLOODY HATE sites that force you to register, THEN use the mere
posession of your email address as implied permission to send you crap
promo emails every week.

You would be amazed at the number of delivery attempts I block
on the basis of originating IP address. (And for the past couple of
weeks, there seems to be a new spaming (or is it virus) package out
there which doesn't take refusal to allow a connection as meaning that
they should stop. one of them tried 3570 times between

"Dec 30 03:37:48" and "Dec 30 06:56:31"

before I set a static route to the loopback address to keep my logfiles
from getting too large for their directory. That is 3 hours 19 minutes
approximately, or 1078 attempts per hour. And this was only the largest
number of attempts that are still in the last maillog.

I wrote some scripts to make it easy to extract every one which
tried over 100 times in a short period, and then started adding them to
the static routing as well. That kept things under control.

The reason I suspect a virus is that it all went quiet
yesterday, though I'm not sure in which time zone it happened. But
sudden worldwide switch-off behavior is very virus-like.

There is NO WAY IN HELL www.open-source-cnc.com is going to mail
anyone, except in the following specific circumstances.

The problem is that this is the expectation when you have to
register for a site.

1/ you ELECT to be notified by email if a thread of the forums you're
watching has a follow up.

2/ you ELECT to sign up for the newsletter as/when/if it is implemented

3/ the admins think there is a REALLY good reason to notify all users
of something, off hand, since the site doesn't do e-commerce and so
cannot be holding anything like credit card or social security numbers,
I can't think of a single reason that qualifies.

For the record, I was a long time subscriber to NANAE and NANAU, ran my
own servers etc, was involved in the anti spam game, and can guarantee
the only mail anyone is going to get is mail they want, proper genuine
requested mails, no spammer lies / doublespeak about opt-in, double
optin etc

As one who knows NANAE and NANAU (usenet newsgroups dedicated to
fighting spam in e-mail and usnet), this makes *me* feel a bit better.
But I *still* won't be registering at your site until I feel a personal
need to post there.

I also ran my own usenet server -- until my ISP dropped all
support for usenet -- after which I switched ISPs. The new one is
*supposed* to offer a (partial) feed, but nobody there knows who I talk
to to set it up. :-( And -- their own news server drops my postings
about every third posting. I have to watch for the notice that it went
to ~/dead.article, and jump through hoops to read it back in and re-post
it. I never had this problem with my own server, and not even with
newsguy either -- though articles tended to expire a lot too quickly for
my taste.

hope this clears that point up, if it doesn't, ask away, no secrets
here.

This makes me feel better. But there is still the problem of
what happens if someone is able to breach security on your web site.
I'm running my web site on an OpenBSD box (which runs the web server in
a chroot jail) and still don't trust it to hold anything truly
sensitive.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

According to Guy Fawkes :

DoN. Nichols wrote:
According to F. George McDuffee :
Fantastic idea and more importantly follow-through. Already book
marked.

What are the top ten needs/wants?

Good CAD/CAM packages in the open source world. Commercial
packages have an extreme price for unix systems compared to windows.
There are reasonable CAD packages, but the companion CAM, for converting
the drawing files into G-code seems to be harder to come by.

http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html

Yep -- that is one which I have already. I find it installed on
the OpenBSD systems, but not on Solaris at the moment, for whatever
reason.

Hmm ... it has gone to having only a demo version downloadable
now, and I don't think that I want to know what they will charge for the
Solaris version. :-)

http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html

http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/UTILlinks.html

The ones which I would want are still listed as "not yet" for
source availability. :-(

Thanks anyway,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

According to Guy Fawkes :

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

I agree. If I register, then more junk mail is likely. As if we don't
already get enough junk mail.

No way, no how, no chance.

I BLOODY HATE sites that force you to register, THEN use the mere
posession of your email address as implied permission to send you crap
promo emails every week.

You would be amazed at the number of delivery attempts I block
on the basis of originating IP address. (And for the past couple of
weeks, there seems to be a new spaming (or is it virus) package out
there which doesn't take refusal to allow a connection as meaning that
they should stop. one of them tried 3570 times between

"Dec 30 03:37:48" and "Dec 30 06:56:31"

before I set a static route to the loopback address to keep my logfiles
from getting too large for their directory. That is 3 hours 19 minutes
approximately, or 1078 attempts per hour.

I wrote some scripts to make it easy to extract every one which
tried over 100 times in a short period, and then started adding them to
the static routing as well. That kept things under control.

The reason I suspect a virus is that it all went quiet
yesterday, though I'm not sure in which time zone it happened. But
sudden worldwide switch-off behavior is very virus-like.

There is NO WAY IN HELL www.open-source-cnc.com is going to mail
anyone, except in the following specific circumstances.

The problem is that this is the expectation when you have to
register for a site.

1/ you ELECT to be notified by email if a thread of the forums you're
watching has a follow up.

2/ you ELECT to sign up for the newsletter as/when/if it is implemented

3/ the admins think there is a REALLY good reason to notify all users
of something, off hand, since the site doesn't do e-commerce and so
cannot be holding anything like credit card or social security numbers,
I can't think of a single reason that qualifies.

For the record, I was a long time subscriber to NANAE and NANAU, ran my
own servers etc, was involved in the anti spam game, and can guarantee
the only mail anyone is going to get is mail they want, proper genuine
requested mails, no spammer lies / doublespeak about opt-in, double
optin etc

As one who knows NANAE and NANAU (usenet newsgroups dedicated to
fighting spam in e-mail and usnet), this makes *me* feel a bit better.
But I *still* won't be registering at your site until I feel a personal
need to post there.

I also ran my own usenet server -- until my ISP dropped all
support for usenet -- after which I switched ISPs. The new one is
*supposed* to offer a (partial) feed, but nobody there knows who I talk
to to set it up. :-( And -- their own news server drops my postings
about every third posting. I have to watch for the notice that it went
to ~/dead.article, and jump through hoops to read it back in and re-post
it. I never had this problem with my own server, and not even with
newsguy either -- though articles tended to expire a lot too quickly for
my taste.

hope this clears that point up, if it doesn't, ask away, no secrets
here.

This makes me feel better. But there is still the problem of
what happens if someone is able to breach security on your web site.
I'm running my web site on an OpenBSD box (which runs the web server in
a chroot jail) and still don't trust it to hold anything truly
sensitive.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

How about the Unix to Dos and Dos to Unix utilities!

UUENCode.exe - Wtar.exe Unix2Dos.exe Dos2unix.exe Hex40bin.exe

I have an archive of them.
Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder



DoN. Nichols wrote:
According to Cliff :

On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 02:39:19 +0000, (DoN.
Nichols) wrote:


gzip (GNU zip)

There are also UNIX utilities compact & compress. Are they on Linux?
I'd sort of expect so but .... IIRC compact may have problems with
largish files ( ~ 1MB).


Compress (based on the Lempel-Ziv algorithm) had fallen out of
favor because the algorithm was patented, and the holder of the patent
(Unisys) was insisting on charging royalties for any use of it (after it
had been open source for a time) -- with no exceptions for open-source
freely-distributed programs. I *think* that the patent has now expired,
so it is freely available again, but gzip and bzip2 are so much more
efficient that there seems to be little likelihood that the older
compress will come back into common usage.

I note that it does come with Sun's Solaris -- at least from
SunOs 4.1.4 all the way up to Solaris 10. (Though I remember the days
when I had to compile it to use it.)

As for "compact" -- that may be truly antique, as I don't have
any examples of it.

The first three pages of Google hits for "compact program
source" offered nothing of any apparent relevance.

I do remember one program which I got from the OS-9 user's group
library (Microware's OS-9, not the recent Macintosh one) which was a bit
more configurable than most -- and as a result, it was the only one
which worked on a BBN C70 (mostly v7 unix like), because that machine
had 10-bit bytes, 20-bit words, and 40-bit longs. While "compress"
worked well enough on plain text files, it totally blew up on binaries.

This program, however, could be configured to the byte size, so
it worked quite well on that system.

Enjoy,
DoN.

P.S. I may not see your replies, because I normally have you
killfiled to keep away from the political discussions. I
happened to follow a couple of thread branches into your
comments (which were marked as already read, but I knew that I
had *not* read them, just to see what they contained.


----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

In article rs.com,
(DoN. Nichols) wrote:

According to Joseph Gwinn :

[ ... ]

In the Windows worlds, it's pretty easy to accidentally become
windows-dependent, and be trapped in the Windows Upgrade Treadmill.
Requiring demonstrated support for at least one of the the other two
platforms prevents accidental addiction. ActiveX controls are a
particular danger.

One of the entry points for viruses. And *certainly* not
supported on other OSs -- thank goodness. :-)

Avoiding the treadmill is another big reason to stick with plain old ISO
C.

Agreed.

[ ... ]

[snip]
Perhaps add a choice of something common in Windows which does
not require proprietary software to create on unix systems. A
version of "zip" is frequently found on modern unix systems, and
is in freely available source format as well.

Works on MacOS too.

Of course, the current MacOS (OS-X) is layered on top of a unix
kernel, so you should be able to pick up the unix utilities which don't
happen to have been included and compile them with no serious problems,
as long as you don't mind working at the command-line level.

[ ... ]

7) ARJ and ACE are two others with which I am not familiar. I
don't think that I will bother with a Google search on those at
this time, however.

Aside from problems with proprietary lock-in, there is the problem with
formats becoming obsolete and becoming orphans, so the core formats
should be both open and widely used for decades, with a large enough
user base to ensure perpetual support, whatever the fortunes of the
current supporting entities.

Agreed! And ones which are open source means that you can keep
them alive long after they have been abandoned by others, should it
become necessary.

8) While we're about it -- documentation should avoid proprietary
formats, such as Microsoft Word. Plain ASCII is a good choice,
or if you need something with fancy formatting, make it PDF
format. (Yes, I know that you have to pay Adobe to have their
program able to create PDF files -- but we've got other options
as well for that, since Ghostscript can also create PDF files,
and that is available in Open Source form.

Although pdf is proprietary, it is documented.

Which is why ghostscript's companion shell script ps2pdf(1) was
possible. No reverse engineering needed.

And -- there is xpdf(1) (for unix systems running X11), also
open source. I tend to use it by preference to Adobe Acrobat reader.

Adobe publishes the full
file format in a widely available book, allowing widespread 3rd-party
support. So, documents prepared using even Word and then converted to
pdf will be understandable forever, even if both MS and Adobe were to
vanish. The problem occurs when one wants to update the original
document, although there are tools to go from PDF to MS Word.

The problem is that plain ASCII doesn't do drawings very well, so
someone's drawing package will be needed.

Agreed. Note that programs like xfig(1) (again open source) can
generate the input to troff/groff source files to print drawings (using
the pic macro sets). And, they can print to PostScript, which can then
be translated to pdf by ps2pdf(1) from ghostscript.

The problem of this kind of solution is that it can be pretty fiddly,
and may require far too much computer knowledge, more than one should
expect of the average metalworker.


Nor does ascii do justice to mathematical equations. Internet RFCs are
all plain ascii, except for RFC-1305 (NTPv3). The reason that 1305 was
given an exemption was that there was no way to render the equations in
ascii.

Note that the eqn macro set for troff/groff can do a very nice
job of typesetting math, which (as above) can be converted to
PostSCript, and from there to PDF.

Yes, but then troff and groff are being replaced by Latex, and all of
these have their own learning curves.

At least with latex there is a open version, plus a commercial offering
that is reputed to be very good. Don't know if it runs under MacOs
without resort to the BSD underpinnings.


And -- ghostscript(1) is open source (from GNU), so again it is
possible to maintain if needed. We are not at the mercy of a single OS
continuing to operate.

Yes. Actually, pdf is the natural display language of MacOS 10 and
later.

Joe Gwinn

All:

Please note that the IGES 5.3 specification is not freely
available. If you want a copy of the IGES 5.3 specification,
be prepared to shell out $425 (US) for a downloadable PDF
and $495 (US) for a CD-ROM. Go to:

http://www.nist.gov/iges/

click on "Current Version" in the lefthand frame and
finally click on "US Product Data Assoiciation/IGES Catalog"
to get the price list.

Enjoy,

-Wayne

Cliff wrote:
Sheesh
Go to NIST.
Get one of the IGES "viewers". IIRC Source is
freely available for some.
Start out using IGES as your part file database.

This would at least assure that your parts are 100% IGES
compatable G. And open with other systems that support IGES
(mostly).
Half the work done in defining entity data & records too.

Then you could get APT source to do the CAM bits,
as a starting point .... G.

BIG Clue #1: If it's NOT 5 axes to begin with you are
already up the creek. Making 2 or 3 axes stuff is *EASY*
but making that 5 axes later is not. Making 5 axes do only
2 or 3 is simple (they are a subset).