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Mac Forum / Programming / CodeWarrior / April 2005PowerPlant Discontinued
Listed on Metrowerks' Discontinued Products web page http://www.metrowerks.com/Discontinued/default.htm (in addition to the Windows compiler) is: PowerPlant Framework for Mac Do I assume that this is the Classic version and does not include PowerPlant X? Jonathan Hoyle > Listed on Metrowerks' Discontinued Products web page > http://www.metrowerks.com/Discontinued/default.htm (in addition to the [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > Jonathan Hoyle I think the website is mistaken. PowerPlant for Mac was never sold as an individual product. The cross platform PowerPlantXP for Windows was, and that's what I think should be listed on the webpage.  SignatureIsaac Wankerl Metrowerks >Listed on Metrowerks' Discontinued Products web page >http://www.metrowerks.com/Discontinued/default.htm (in addition to the [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >Do I assume that this is the Classic version and does not include >PowerPlant X? PowerPlantXP the cross platform version was discontinued PowerParts for Windows which was never sold as a stand alone product was discontinued. PowerPlant has been discontinued. Ron SignatureMetrowerks Community Forum is a free online resource for developers to discuss CodeWarrior topics with other users and Metrowerks' staff -- http://www.metrowerks.com/community -- Ron Liechty - MWRon@metrowerks.com - http://www.metrowerks.com >PowerPlant has been discontinued. ARRGGGHHH PowerPlant has NOT been discontinued I knew as soon as I hit Send that I'd left out that word. My apology to anyone that I confused. Ron SignatureMetrowerks Community Forum is a free online resource for developers to discuss CodeWarrior topics with other users and Metrowerks' staff -- http://www.metrowerks.com/community -- Ron Liechty - MWRon@metrowerks.com - http://www.metrowerks.com Hi Ron, That clears it up nicely. Thanks again! Jonathan > PowerPlantXP the cross platform version was discontinued Well, in that case, how about releasing the source to it as an unsupported download? Plenty of folks I'm sure would find that useful for projects that aren't worth the investment for the commercial version, me for starters! > > PowerPlantXP the cross platform version was discontinued > > Well, in that case, how about releasing the source to it as an unsupported > download? Plenty of folks I'm sure would find that useful for projects that > aren't worth the investment for the commercial version, me for starters! Because they did not write PowerPlant for Windows: they licensed the porting library Mac2Win from Altura and compiled it that way. Mac2Win is an older porting technology that essentially implemented the Mac API (Classic and some parts of Carbon) in Windows. Unfortunately, the latest version of PowerPlant that Altura supported in their downloads was the Classic version, not the Carbon version. Presumably, Metrowerks used a lot of #ifdef's or separate brnaches or something to get around this problem; but it seems a moot point now. As Metrowerks was one of the largest customers Altura had left, I doubt that Mac2Win will have much further viability once CodeWarrior 10 is released. Jonathan Hoyle >Because they did not write PowerPlant for Windows: they licensed the >porting library Mac2Win from Altura and compiled it that way. Mac2Win [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] >that Mac2Win will have much further viability once CodeWarrior 10 is >released. Do you have any documenting evidence of this assertation? >>Do you have any documenting evidence of this assertation? What is an "assertation"? I suppose you mean "assertion"? Also, I am not sure which "assertion" you were asking about. The existence of Mac2Win itself is of course "documented" at their web site: http://www.altura.ro/Mac2Win/mac2win_frame.htm . Metrowerks' use of it wasn't really a secret, as they have openly said so themselves in many places, including this newsgroup, as well as a MacTech article http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.12/12.04/Apr96FactoryFloor/ . If it's my "assertion" that Metrowerks was one of Altura largest customers, I admit that was pure speculation, as most cross-platform apps have since moved away from Altura. (I am told that Photoshop once used this technology, but don't quote me on that.) Mac2Win is also the reason that Metrowerks placed such an expensive price tag on PowerPlant for Windows. Because Altura charges royalties on sales of Mac2Win ported apps, that had to be passed on to the PowerPlant/Win customer, which of course was extremely unpopular. (Besides being obscenely expensive, there are already many inexpensive alternatives for cross-platform frameworks.) A really cool test to tell if a Windows app was ported via Mac2Win is the Secret About Box found in most ported applications: hit ALT-U-R-A (spells "Altura") and you get the hidden Mac2Win About Box. That worked with CodeWarrior for Windows for versions 5 & 6, but stopped I think sometime around CodeWarrior 8, probably due to ALT-U, ALT-R or ALT-A being co-opted for some other feature. Hope that helps. Please let me know if you need further "documenting evidence" of other "assertations". Jonathan Hoyle >ALT-A being co-opted for some other feature. > >Hope that helps. Please let me know if you need further "documenting >evidence" of other "assertations". In other words, you have no evidence that PowerPlant for Windows used Altura, now CodeWarrior. It's all ancedotal. I doubt Metrowerks was simply a Mac2Win reseller... >>In other words, you have no evidence that PowerPlant for Windows used Altura, now CodeWarrior. Huh? Didn't I just give such evidence? Maybe I'm misunderstanding since that sentence does not completely make sense to me. >>It's all ancedotal. If the word of a Metrowerks' lead engineer is considered anecdotal, then yes, it is anecdotal. >>I doubt Metrowerks was simply a Mac2Win reseller... Again, you seem to misunderstand the nature of this. Many applications, including one I worked on for years, used Mac2Win as their porting technology. Such companies do not "resell" Mac2Win per se, however, they do have to pay royalties on the sales of their product, usually a percentage of the revenue intake. I'm a little surprised that this is getting so angry. I am doing nothing more than passing on what Metrowerks engineers have told me in the past. If things have changed in the past couple releases, fine. But I'm not just making up this Mac2Win connection, and I was just trying to pass along the information as I know it. I was not trying to offend anyone. Clearly MWRon knows more about this than I do, so I'll let him respond. Jonathan Hoyle >If the word of a Metrowerks' lead engineer is considered anecdotal, >then yes, it is anecdotal. Indeed it is, as there's no documentation saying PP for windows used Altura, and MWRon said PP for Windows wasn't using Altura. PP for Windows is not necessarily the same implementation as early CW IDE implementations. Remember when the windows hosted IDE suddenly started working really nicely compared to before? :) You know what happens when you assume... >I'm a little surprised that this is getting so angry. I am doing >nothing more than passing on what Metrowerks engineers have told me in [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > >Clearly MWRon knows more about this than I do, so I'll let him respond. No one is getting angry here. >> PP for Windows is not necessarily the same implementation as early >> CW IDE implementations. Remember when the windows hosted IDE >> suddenly started working really nicely compared to before? :) Yes, that's a good point. Still, the Secret About Box thing seems like a smoking gun to me. In the end though it's a moot point as Metrowerks is killing the product off. :-( > >> PP for Windows is not necessarily the same implementation as early > >> CW IDE implementations. Remember when the windows hosted IDE [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > a smoking gun to me. In the end though it's a moot point as Metrowerks > is killing the product off. :-( I think there is still some confusion here, mostly based on terminology and product names. PowerPlant: A C++ source code library for building Mac applications. Mac2Win: A porting library which implements a portion of the Mac Toolbox C API on Windows, allowing Mac source code to be recompiled to run on Windows. PowerPlant for Windows (PowerPlantXP): An implementation of the PowerPlant C++ API on Windows, designed to help port PowerPlant programs to Windows. This was developed by Metrowerks without using Mac2Win. CW IDE: The CodeWarrior integrated development environment, an executable program with both Mac and Windows versions. The first versions were created using PowerPlant and ran only on Macintosh. A Windows version was created (I don't recall exactly when), which used Altura's Mac2Win porting library. Later Windows versions used "PowerPlant for Windows". I don't know the details, but there may have been some versions where both Mac2Win and "PowerPlant for Windows" were used. So, Metrowerks used Altura's Mac2Win to develop some early versions of the CodeWarrior IDE for Windows. However, a separate product, called "PowerPlant for Windows", was developed independently by Metrowerks and used for later versions of the CodeWarrior IDE for Windows. -- Greg Dow Thanks, Greg, that clears it up pretty well for me! By the way, who was the lucky company that picked you up after you left Metrowerks last year? > Thanks, Greg, that clears it up pretty well for me! > > By the way, who was the lucky company that picked you up after you left > Metrowerks last year? I am presently working for Macromedia (soon to be Adobe). And to make this message on topic, both Macromedia and Adobe have used PowerPlant in some of their products. -- Greg >> > PowerPlantXP the cross platform version was discontinued >> [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > >Because they did not write PowerPlant for Windows: This assertion is wrong. PowerPlant for Windows is not based on Altura's technology. it is based on Metrowerks Lattitude and other Metrowerks developed technology. Metrowerks did use Altura's technology for our very early Windows hosted tools, and some things carried over when we went to PPxpn I am fairly sure that PPxp was developed in a black box without any knowledge of Altura technology and was not backwards engineered. Ron SignatureMetrowerks Community Forum is a free online resource for developers to discuss CodeWarrior topics with other users and Metrowerks' staff -- http://www.metrowerks.com/community -- Ron Liechty - MWRon@metrowerks.com - http://www.metrowerks.com Mac2Win was certainly used by Metrowerks at least as far as CodeWarrior 6 (a PowerPlant application), and that fact can be demonstrated by bringing up the Mac2Win Secret About Box. Furthermore, Greg Dow made the following statement in the aforementioned article: "To port code to Windows, I recommend that people investigate Mac2Win from Altura Software. The Mac2Win libraries emulate the Mac Toolbox on Windows. Metrowerks is using these libraries to port portions of the CodeWarrior environment to Windows." The latest version of PowerPlant still distributed by Altura was the last pre-Carbonized version, which would make sense why Metrowerks had to do some of their own work on this as well lately. The engineers I spoke to at WWDC were pretty open about their use of Mac2Win back then. Now, I don't doubt that Lattitude was a major part of this porting process as well, and perhaps in the last couple versions of CodeWarrior and PowerPlant, most all of Altura was removed. But to suggest that no part of Altura was used in the making of PowerPlant for Windows is just too hard to swallow. Unless of course Metrowerks had some independent and totally coincidental reasons for duplicating Altura's Secret About Box. Jonathan Hoyle >Mac2Win was certainly used by Metrowerks at least as far as CodeWarrior >6 (a PowerPlant application), and that fact can be demonstrated by >bringing up the Mac2Win Secret About Box Correct various components were not converted until they were re-written. > Furthermore, Greg Dow made >the following statement in the aforementioned article: If I remember correctly (and I'm pretty confident I do) Greg Dow did not work on PowerPlant for Windows. >Unless of course Metrowerks had some independent and totally >coincidental reasons for duplicating Altura's Secret About Box. You are still looking at a Metrowerks application and not PowerPlantXP which is a porting library. Those that are into these things could tell which components were converted using Altura and PowerPlant by how the bitmaps looked differently on Windows. Ron SignatureMetrowerks Community Forum is a free online resource for developers to discuss CodeWarrior topics with other users and Metrowerks' staff -- http://www.metrowerks.com/community -- Ron Liechty - MWRon@metrowerks.com - http://www.metrowerks.com Even if PowerPlant 'classic' is discontinued, you'll always have the source code, and given the clear and well-thought-out design of the framework, it is easy to extend to include new idioms, including Quartz, sheets, drawers, HIViews etc. That's the approach I'm taking, at least for now. Gen |
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