Subject: Re: Debian ports for RiscPC, ARM710, etc.

From: Eduard Pfarr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 10:39:58 +0200

»Melanie Rhianna Lewis« schrieb in Artikel
<[email-masked]> folgendes:

Hallo,

> > I'd be very interested in exact numbers: How many of these Acorns have
> > got a StrongARM? Personally speaking I hardly know any Acorn RiscPC
> > user who hasn't upgraded to StrongARM, so I guess: Quite many
> > StrongARMed Acorns.
> 
> Well mine hasn't been upgraded and is unlikely too as I have other
> priorities (motor bikes!).  Its still a basic RPC600 except with a SCSI
> card, 32Mb ram and 2Mb VRAM.  Its perfectly usable and runs about the same
> speed as my girlfriend's 486DX66 running Linux.  Its also a perfect
> compliment to my P166 Linux box.

> I would quite like a Debian/ELF release thanks.

If I did understand Jim and the others right they intend to do an ARMv3
release which will work on any ARM »below« StrongARM - ie RiscPCs with
ARM6xx and ARM7xx (and slower than must be on StrongARM RiscPCs).

> If I want strong arm I'll get a netwinder.

For most RiscPC users without a StrongARM it's a question of about £100-150
to insert a StrongARM processor card and suddenly their RiscPC flies. Try it
out and you'll be truely amazed <g>.

 Cheers,
 Eduard.

-- 
Wunschliste Linux-Software: http://linuxresources.com/wish/
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From: Phil Norman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 13:08:12 +0100

In message <[email-masked]>

> release which will work on any ARM »below« StrongARM - ie RiscPCs with
                                     ^     ^
Please stop using the above highlighted characters; they're high ASCII, and
really should not be used in emails.

> ARM6xx and ARM7xx (and slower than must be on StrongARM RiscPCs).

No, you did not understand correctly.  Any linux-arm stuff compiled for v3
ARMs will work on the StrongARM.

StrongARM users are not being hard done by; we are being supported.

Phil

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From: Eduard Pfarr <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 18:44:39 +0200

»Phil Norman« schrieb in Artikel
<[email-masked]> folgendes:

> Please stop using the above highlighted characters; they're high ASCII,
> and really should not be used in emails.

Unusual - 3/4 of the European countries need »high ASCII« chars in their
mother language and people from there use these characters in e-mails as
well as Usenet articles. I've done this successfully for many years now,
too, and it works fine on Windoze and RISC OS. If it's a problem here I
will have to do something about it.

> ARMs will work on the StrongARM.

Great to hear.

However does »slower than must be on StrongARM RiscPCs« apply?

 Cheers,
 Eduard.

---

From: Philip Blundell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 18:10:12 +0100

>However does "slower than must be on StrongARM RiscPCs" apply?

To a limited extent.  But the binaries you get for the Intel port, for 
example, aren't going to be optimal for every single CPU out there -- the deal 
has always been that if you're all that bothered (most people aren't) you have 
the source, you can compile your own binaries.  I think the same thing applies 
here.

p.

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From: Matthew Wilcox <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 19:24:07 +0200

> will have to do something about it.

I think you can see what my software does to them.  It looks most
unpleasant and isn't even remotely necessary since you can use the
ordinary quotes `,' or ".  SMTP is specified for 7 bit messages only.

In any case, if the top bit is to be used, it is wrong to use it to
encode only another 128 characters.  UTF-8 is the way of the future
(and for some, the present).

-- 
Matthew Wilcox <[email-masked]>
"I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms.  There are
better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of
one's contributions to computer science."  -- Donald E. Knuth, TAoCP vol 3
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From: Nicolas Pitre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 14:29:00 -0400 (EDT)

> ordinary quotes `,' or ".  SMTP is specified for 7 bit messages only.

This kind of message makes me mad when I see it.  You should be aware that
there isn't only English in the world even if Americans were part of the
first computer designs and didn't bother about other characters than the
plain dumb ASCII.  SMTP and NNTP are 8 bits now and since I actually can
see those quotes right even from the above wich is a reply from your
mailer I must conclude that your mailer and the SMTP gateways on the path
from it to the mailing list handle high ASCII just fine.  These characters
are displayed correctly within Winblows and Linux too, even in text mode
which is what I use.

I hope that your mailer is MIME compliant because otherwise those special
characters will appear like an ugly escape sequence.

So please, don't complain to others if your display is broken but fix it
instead.  And please don't be another advocate of those narrow-minded
7-bits-only designs...

	«Le français possède des accents, il faut les respecter.»

P.S.:  Don't take it personal,  I must admit I'm not in a good mood today.

Nicolas Pitre, B. ing.
[email-masked]

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From: Matthew Wilcox <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:06:46 +0200

> are displayed correctly within Winblows and Linux too, even in text mode

Thank you for gratuitously snipping the part of my message where I
specifically mention UTF-8.  If you don't even know what that is, who
the hell do you think you are criticising me for not being considerate
enough for languages apart from English?  You're the arrogant one for
not considering languages outside of this little corner of Europe.

For those who don't know, UTF-8 is an encoding of Unicode invented at Bell
Labs which has many nice properties.  It supports up to 2^32 characters as
specified and there's space to specify more.  The main point is that
ASCII is compatible with UTF-8 (the mapping from ASCII to UTF-8 is the
identity mapping) and using one's own local extensions to it is NOT.

My mailer seems to cope with them fine (as it should - there's no reason
to gratuitously break) whereas my _editor_ displays them in a very nasty
way.

To me in this editor, it looks like:

>       \xabLe fran\xe7ais poss\xe8de des accents, il faut les respecter.\xbb   

Since I'm not a french speaker, I don't know what the typographic
conventions are for the cedilla.  Aber ich habe kein problem mit jemand
zu reden ueber sieben-bit ASCII auf deutsch (ausserhalb mein schlect
deutsch, natuerlich)

> P.S.:  Don't take it personal,  I must admit I'm not in a good mood today.

Oh, but I do take it personally when someone who plainly knows less about
the issues than I do starts to criticise me!

---

From: Matthew Wilcox <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:06:46 +0200

---

From: "Elijah L. Wright" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 14:43:54 -0500 (CDT)

you know, i personally don't have time to deal with this kind of crap.

if the mailer or the editor you're using simply can't deal with the kind
of characters that are being used, perhaps you need to get a new piece of
software.  pine/linux in latin-1 mode handles all of what's been posted
just jolly.

if you're going to have a charset-snob flamewar, at least stop cc'ing
lists.  UTF-8 is fine.  so are a lot of other charsets.  don't be a bigot.

i bet people are unsubscribing because of things like this.  don't waste
everyone's time with your petty argument.

-elijah wright

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From: Matthew Wilcox <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:58:11 +0200

> you know, i personally don't have time to deal with this kind of crap.

Fine.  hit the `delete' button.  move on.  i do that for threads that I'm
not interested in.  i don't feel obliged to read everything that ends up
in my mailbox.

> software.  pine/linux in latin-1 mode handles all of what's been posted

my mailer handles it fine.  the question was whether it was defined.  it
is frequently a bad idea to assume that the rest of the world speaks
iso 8859/1 because frankly, it doesn't.  it's all about how important it
is to you to get your message across.  therefore i don't use top bit set
characters.  character 148 & character 149 are much nicer looking quotes,
but i don't use them because it's not necessary to convey the point of
the message.

> lists.  UTF-8 is fine.  so are a lot of other charsets.  don't be a bigot.

i can tell you didn't read my earlier post.  i wasn't the one being
bigoted.  i was the one pointing out that the `everything should cope with
8 bit so i can use my national character set' argument is flawed.

> everyone's time with your petty argument.

then good riddance to them.

---

From: Matthew Wilcox <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:58:11 +0200

---

From: Dave Gilbert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:53:57 +0100 (BST)

> the source, you can compile your own binaries.  I think the same thing applies 

I agree with this; I don't think the short loads make much odds for most
purposes; by all means teach the compiler to optimise for performance on
StrongARM by knowing about the cache/instruction latencies and anything
like that; but dont cause incompatibility where it is not essential.

If you MUST cause incompatibility then I suggest that you modify 'init'
so that it will start on both machines and then will display:
'YOU ARE RUNNING THE WRONG BINARY VERSION FOR THIS ARCHITECTURE'

or something similar - the last thing I want is 75% of the messages being
'I've just installed Debian/ARM on my ARM600 RiscPC and some things
randomly crash....'

Dave

 --------------------------------------------------------------------   
/ Dr. David Alan Gilbert      | Running Linux on Alpha(LX) |  Happy  \ 
\   gro.gilbert @ treblig.org |   & ARM(EBSA285,old Arc)   |  In Hex /
 \____________________________|___ http://www.treblig.demon.co.uk __/

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From: Philip Blundell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:59:34 +0100

>like that; but dont cause incompatibility where it is not essential.

FWIW, I think the theory is that "-march=armv3 -mtune=strongarm110" will do 
this, though I've never tried it.

>'I've just installed Debian/ARM on my ARM600 RiscPC and some things

To be fair, you'd have to be pretty determined to do that -- one assumes that 
the "arm" distribution (ie the one for netwinders, EBSA's and so on) wouldn't 
ship with a kernel that ran on the RiscPC.

p.

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From: Russell King - ARM Linux Admin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 22:56:01 +0100 (BST)

> will have to do something about it.

Indeed - your mails are correctly mime-encapsulated, so there should be no
problem transporting the mail across the internet (indeed, this mail made it
to me with no conversion from 8-bit, whereas others get autoconverted along
their route and back again).  I think what Matthew is complaining about are
the weird characters that appear as a result.

However, it will cause a problem because most of us unix freeks ;) like to
just hit reply, and that normally sends stuff in plain-old 7-bit (since this
is what we use).
   _____
  |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
  |   |        Russell King       [email-masked]      --- ---
  | | | |  http://www.arm.uk.linux.org/~rmk/armlinux.html    /  /  |
  | +-+-+                                                     --- -+-
  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
 /  | | |                                                     ---  |
    +-+-+ -------------------------------------------------  /\\\  |
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