I don't wish to be rude, Olin, but you seem to be uncannily sure that your view
is correct.  I assume this means you've done market studies in all the countries
Microchip sells to?

Many companies are succesful because they use the least expensive tool (but
still efficient) for the job.  If the computer runs MPLAB on win3.1, and only
cost the company $200, then why pay another $800 or more to upgrade the hardware
just to run an OS which does nothing more than what 3.1 does for them already?

Perhaps you've not lived in other countries where the hardware and software are
not as readily had as here in the US.  I haven't lived in any other country.  I
am a programmer for a small company which markets its products worldwide.  My
programs have to run on windows 3.1 up through windows Millenium.  They also
have to deal with long and short file names, as well as double byte character
systems (primarily japanese and other asian languages) (which is a pain in the
neck when you have to communicate with a serial port device and the OS wants to
convert your binary data to double byte character data)

I don't wish to knock your opinion of where Microchip's priorities lie, but what
is keeping you from making your own development environment which would far
surpass what Microchip is giving to you for free?  You wouldn't have to do any
programming.  Just pick up one of the dozens of programmer's editors available
on the internet (most for under $30) and plug in your command line
compilers/assemblers/simulators.  Most of those editors come with code
highlighting and other features which are worth (to most people) the money they
paid, and which may never be in Microchip's software.

-Adam

Olin Lathrop wrote:
>
> > There isn't a very elegant way of supporting long file names under windows
> and
> > be able to run on windows 3.1 as well.
>
> Right, so loose the Windows 3.1 and DOS support.  I doubt there is any
> significant amount of serious commercial development work (resulting in chip
> volumes) being done on those archaic platforms.  Working well and taking
> full advantage of Win NT and 2000 is far more important.
>
> *****************************************************************
> Olin Lathrop, embedded systems consultant in Devens Massachusetts
> (978) 772-3129, olin@cognivis.com, http://www.cognivis.com
>
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