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<DIV>Hi Folks:</DIV>
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<DIV>Sorry for my long absence on the M3 development front. I've been watching with great interest the flurry of activity regarding 64-bit INTEGERS and the changes in the garbage collection, threading models, etc.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV>I believe I am now in a position to begin doing a little more Modula-3 work from time to time.</DIV>
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<DIV>My primary environment currently is Windows XP. I have the old cm3 v4.1 system running on XP using Microsoft's free Visual Studio environment for the linking and the C/C++ compilation. My v4.1 system works with Trestle, FormsVBT, pickles, network objects, etc. It uses a native Win32 backend, not the GCC backend. I am able to deal with the embedded spaces in filenames by forcing everything to use Microsoft's short names for the non-8dot3 names (e.g., the names you get via the "dir /X" command). </DIV>
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<DIV>I have a number of multi-threaded programs I've developed over the years on the Windows platform, so as the cm3 community moves forward I will be happy to test the latest cm3 on the Windows XP platform using some of my old programs as tests. Most of the programs were developed for specific clients and thus can't be shared with the community, but they should provide a good set of test cases for the new cm3 because I've had most of these same programs operating on a variety of platforms, including Windows (98, NT, 2000, XP), HP-UX, and Solaris due to the platform-independence provided by cm3.</DIV>
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<DIV>I also have been working to make available the sources of Critical Mass Inc.'s "Reactor" integrated development environment. This environment provided for browsing of package repositories & documentation, building packages, running programs, creating new packages, etc. all from your favorite web browser.</DIV>
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<DIV>Due to various trademark concerns and legal issues, we can no longer use the name "Reactor," so I've taken the liberty of renaming the package "CM3-IDE." (If someone has a better name suggestion, let me know.) I am very close to having all the legal and other requirements worked out to make publication of the revised sources available to the cm3 community. I do need to test the revised sources using the latest cm3 environment.</DIV>
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<DIV>So, my immediate need is for a stable version of cm3 to run on Windows XP so that I can test the new CM3-IDE. Of course, CM3-IDE does work with my v4.1 system, but I had to make changes for the new cm3 version due to changes in TEXT, etc. I tried using a v5.2.6 edition of cm3, but ran into some problems with strange GUI behavior and problems with m3bundles.</DIV>
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<DIV>Since I have a stable v4.1 cm3 system, can I use it to bootstrap the latest cm3 edition? I would appreciate some guidance here on how to obtain the latest stable sources and get a working system on Windows XP.</DIV>
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<DIV>Regards,</DIV>
<DIV>Randy Coleburn</DIV>
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<DIV> </DIV>Randy C. Coleburn, CISSP<BR>Senior Systems Engineer, Communications, Networks, & Electronics Division (CNE)<BR>Corporate & Atlanta Information Systems Security Manager (ISSM)<BR>Scientific Research Corporation<BR>2300 Windy Ridge Parkway, Suite 400 South, Atlanta, Georgia 30339<BR>voice: (770) 989-9464, email: RColeburn@SciRes.com, fax: (770) 989-9497<BR><BR>Quality Policy: "SRC CNE Division is committed to delivering continually improving research & engineering excellence that meets or exceeds customer requirements."</BODY></HTML>