PB for Handys and Tablets (Android, I-Phone, WindowsPhone8)

[RolfT]

Hello!

First: A big thanks for the past years you have createt PureBasic! And for the comming years!
Is there a chance or is it planed that

PB will be running on Tablets or Phones like (Android,I-Phones, Windows8 Phones)

I would pay the price of 79,- € again for that feature becaurse I think there is many work to to for this.
Did anyone know if windowsphone 8 could be programmend with PB?

Best regards and hoping for a long long time you suport PB for WIN8,9,10 ........

Rolf T.

[Shield]

Search the forums...it has been discussed many times before.
Don't expect this to happen any time soon.

[RolfT]

Hello Shield!

Thanks for your informations. I try Mosync with C++ now. But I hoped on PB....
Maybe sometimes...

Greetings
Rolf T.

[USCode]

There IS hope Rolf! We "should" see Win8 x86/64 tablets sometime this year and for those no PB changes required!
Also, there IS a version of FASM for ARM so that platform on Win8 is at least a "possibility" ... not sure how likely though ... Fred might surprise us!

[RolfT]

Hi USCode!

Thanks for Infos! Ah.. PD is programmed in FSAM.
Let´s hoping....

Bye

Rolf

[Tenaja]

There IS hope Rolf! We "should" see Win8 x86/64 tablets sometime this year and for those no PB changes required!
Also, there IS a version of FASM for ARM so that platform on Win8 is at least a "possibility" ... not sure how likely though ... Fred might surprise us!

Having FASM for ARM does not really speed up PB porting to ARM, nor does it make it any more likely for Fred to use it. The task of finding a different assembler would take Fred less than a week, and that would give him time to test several per day.

The problem is the instruction set, NOT the assembler. x86 instructions do not really look much like ARM instructions. For one thing, there are well over 300 x86 instructions, and that does not even include the 64-bit or MMX instructiosn. ARM, on the other hand, is called RISC for a reason: Reduced Instruction Set. Intel would likely have to go back to 8088 days to get their instruction set back to the size of the ARM instruction set.

I am not going to do a comparison here, but you will find a lot if you search. The bottom line is that saying FASM is available for ARM is about the same as saying the dictionary is available in French...but that will not help someone who does not speak French.

[Thorium]

There IS hope Rolf! We "should" see Win8 x86/64 tablets sometime this year and for those no PB changes required!

Doesnt mobile Apps require Metro, so they require WinRT, which isnt supported by PB? Or did they change that?

And Tenaja is right about FASM, if it wouldnt be available for ARM Fred could just use a different assembler. No big deal.

RISC and CISC are pretty much outdated terms. x86 isnt exactly CISC anymore, a lot of instructions are only still there for backwards compatiblity. CISC instructions like LOOP are deprecated and should not be used any longer. (And no compiler uses them today.) Intel and AMD are not optimizing them any longer and optimize for short instructions instead like in RISC concept to enable maximum paralell execution of micro ops. Memory and register access is still very CISC like but most instructions are not.

ARM on the other hand has a very RISC like memory and register access but includes CISC like instructions like the NEON extension.

The concepts of RISC and CISC does not apply any longer.

I hope he will add support for ARM in the future. It was a surprise as he added x64 and i hope we will surprised again.

[Foz]

I believe that you are forgetting something important
- PureBasic is using ONLY 386 instructions so it is backwards compatible across the entire range. The instructions used, though in a CISC, are nowhere near the level of complexity of the more modern CPUs.
- PureBasic already have an actively maintained RISC implementation - the PowerPC chip for OSX.

Bottom-line:
If Fred/Freak want to implement ARM compatibility, it is well within their grasp.
If Fred/Freak want another headache with minimal users, it is well within their grasp.
It entirely boils down to if Fred & Freak want to commit to supporting that platform.

On the otherhand, if Fred & Freak get interested in ARM based computing (i.e. a dual booting Win8 & Linux box), then we might just see an implementation.

At the end of the day, Fred & Freak have a Plan for the progress of PureBasic.
Mobile devices may or may not occur in that Plan.
No one, except the PureBasic team knows that Plan. You may glean snippets of the Plan during their comments and conversations, but it is never settled down into set time periods.

[the.weavster]

..//..
If Fred/Freak want another headache with minimal users, it is well within their grasp.
..//..

Minimal users?
I don't get that bit - what do you mean?

[Foz]

To develop on ARM will require PB to run on ARM architectures.

How many people here run on an ARM platform?

Heck your only choice at the moment is Linux ARM.

Hence my comment about a Win8/Linux hybrid.