[Virtualacorn-list] Enhancing the RISC OS experience

[Vince M Hudd]

ralph_valmai at ntlworld.com wrote:

[snips]

> 2) Would it be possible to write some modules using the host instruction
> set and simply have the emulator pass parameters to the module and receive
> the results? The modules given this treatment would have to be such that a
> significant time saving would result.

In theory, the emulator could provide hooks to allow any DLL (on the Windows
version - I've no idea what the equivalent would be on the Mac OS version)
to be called from any part of RISC OS or any running application, by way of
a SWI or set of SWIs (perhaps provided by HostFS). There would be an
overhead in doing this, but it might pay dividends in some areas.

However, there is a flip side. The first and most obvious flaw is that any
software using such a feature would have either incompatibilities or limited
functionality for people running on native hardware (and for that matter, VA
on Windows vs VA on Max OS X or vice versa); which /might/ mean that few
developers will make use of the facility. (Consider the views that have been
expressed elsehwere regarding why not many developers use Select features).
I'll leave it for others to point out other flaws.

-- 
Vince M Hudd
Soft Rock Software