O Dave Kowalczyk fez hj um comunicado à comunidade de usuários do TurboCNC, transcrevo abaixo:
Folks:
It's been a while since I've posted here. Sorry about that, I've had a pretty serious illness. I'm better now - looks like it was some sort of virus thing that just had me down for the count.
I figure the forum is a good place to post some answers to questions that have been asked here (and also emailed to me):
Burning user question 1: So, what's going on with the versioning anyway?
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I'm not a "market segmentation" kind of guy - I feel that one version should do it all and be easy to use. In software this is possible because it's really just logic - once perfected it doesn't rust, and there's not really any cost for including a little more data in an exe file.
The DOS version of Turbo is not going away, nor is support for the same. I use DOS myself for a lot of things, it's a nice, simple, and snappy OS for single-tasking, which makes it a pretty good choice for a CNC controller.
There are some problems with DOS, which mainly have to do with its obscurity. Most of my support these days is helping XP users figure out how to get to DOS, and then how to work in it. For those of us that have been using computers since the early 90's (or earlier) it's
charming to use the older OS.
Anyone who bought their first computer in the past decade (this is a lot of folks) generally needs help with DOS, and regards it as ugly and clumsy. Right or wrong, the platform choice alienates a lot of people.
There are some other technical considerations to running in Windows - long file name support, better access to memory, better libraries for controls (~60% of the code in TCNC is to drive the text interface) and more modern compilers.
In short, it would be a bad business decision not to produce a port at some point, and now is a pretty good time to do it. We've talked about it a number of times here before, and it's quite cool indeed that AST Industries has managed to cook one up that works well.
Burning user question 2: OK, how soon before anything?
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I've got most of the bugs fixed for 4.2 DOS, I broke the speed control & threading which I need to fix, and then "wire in" the CV implementation which is currently a test harness. This is only a few weeks worth if I can make sure to commit the time - if the next month is anything like last month it'll be a while yet. I know you're all waiting, I am too.
v5 is in pretty good shape, Adilson and I need to hammer out some details for licensing and so forth, but it's pretty solid feature-wise.
I have a LOT of unanswered emails, and projects to square away for people from the last month. If you're waiting for one of these, my apologies - I'll get to you as soon as I can.
In other news, my employer is moving me to a new position in Jeffersonville, Indiana (right near Louisville, KY). I start there Monday (I'm in the process of moving all my stuff now), so if any
users in the area want to meet up, I'm game.
Dave Kowalczyk
