On Thu, 11 Jun 1998 martin@DC.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU wrote:
>         I certainly hope that if linux versions of PIC software are
> developed, they can be happy in a GUI and non GUI environment.  I would
> think it would be much more useful to have good rugged applications
> in which most of the brain power went to make them work properly rather
> than to produce an artistic experience that sometimes does weird things that
> nobody seems to be able to reproduce or explain.  The gcc compiler is a
> wonderful piece of design and I must pinch myself to realize that it
> is free, especially when you think of the time that must have gone in to it.
> There is also a debugger called gdb that is also free and it also works
> in a text-based environment.

I agree wholeheartedly. I only use XWindows for applications which require
a graphical environment such as Netscape and the Gimp, and I don't think a
PIC development environment is one of those things. If people want to
develop a GUI IDE (or better, adapt one of the existing ones to PICs), I
think it's a great idea, but all the basic tools such as assemblers,
compilers, etc. should have a command line interface. It isn't difficult
to run a graphical front end on top of a command line tool, or even write
the tool so that (like emacs) it checks for the presence of X when it
starts up, and runs in X mode if possible or text mode if not.

--------------- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. --------------
: Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham :
---------- http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1532/ ---------