Notes for porting lq-text.

This is the free version.  It is not public domain, but you can use it
freely for non-commercial purposes.
If you want to sell it, or something derived from it, you should get in
touch with the author (me!), who will almost always give permission.

You can contact me as follows:
  lee@sq.com,
  Liam Quin, SoftQuad Inc. 720 Spadina Ave., Toronto, ONT., Canada
  (+1) 416 963-8337

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

PORTING NOTES

Well, I haven't done much porting.
Currently the stuff works on
* System V Release 3.2 (Interactive's 386/ix 2.0.2), 80386
* System V Release 2 (Honeywell Bull XPX 100 X20), 68020
* SunOS 3 and 4 (Sun 3/60 and 3/75), 68020

Since the 68020 and 80386 differ radically, most of the work has probably
been done.  Don't even *think* about non-Unix systems, though.

Likely problems:
* the calls to lockf() in FileList.c and WordInfo.c
  You could comment them out on a single-user system.
  On BSD you could use flock() instead.  It should be mandatory locking.
  Actually, since the individual word entries are not locked, you could
  simply delete the locking code.

* if you have multiple machines sharing the same database, and they do not
  all use the same byte-ordering, you will need to do some hacking.
  The headers in pblock.{c,h}, and Filelist/WordInfo.c will all need
  changing.  They have to read and write fixed-length unsigned longs,
  and very quickly too!
  Alternatively, use sReadNumber() and sWriteNumber(), and always allow
  four bytes.

* you need ndbm.  If you don't have it, you can use sdbm.
  Look at  Liamdb.h and smalldb.h, and compile without -DNDBM.
  If you are on Xenix, you can buy 386/ix from your nearest Interactive
  dealer... Or use dbm().
  If you are on 386/ix, well, as 386/ix doesn't include dbm,
  use sdbm or gdbm.

* On mixed model architectures, make sure that you can have arrays larger
  then 64KBytes (if poss.), that a pointer (char *) fits into an unsigned
  long, and that you have a good supply of coffee.

By all means mail me with questions, providing that you have at least tried
to get somewhere youself.

Lee
utzoo!sq!lee
lee@sq.com
