[ REQ 6164]: porting to machten

[goodman at math.uiowa.edu]

To: software@geom.umn.edu
Subject: porting to machten

I made an initial attempt to port geomview to 
machten for ppc macintosh.  Machten is essentially
bsd 4.xx  unix,  somehow made to live as a Macintosh
process.  It seems like most of it compiled, but
it got stuck somewhere in mg.  I think it was
mgx11P.h  that wanted to include some files called
sys/ipc.h  and sys/shm.h  or something close to that.
These files don't exist anywhere on my system.
(I have X11R6 and mesa installed.)

Perhaps it would be of interest to you to help with 
the port, as this would provide a route to make geomview
active on a Mac **along with the MacOS**.

Regards,  Fred Goodman
Dept of Math
U of Iowa

On another subject,  probably more important,  I am interested
in developing interactive tools for explorations of symmetries
(for example of regular polyhedra) probably using 
vrml2 and Java.  This is in connection with an algebra text
I have written for Prentice Hall, which stresses geometric
symmetry.  I have started to work with a group at the U. of I.
computing center, called Second Look Computing, which
specializes in interactive educational software, but has little
geometric expertise.  Perhaps someone up there would be 
interested in making this a joint project.  We (U of Iowa and 
Minn) are both affiliates of the math institute at Minn. and
also of the CIC (something like center for institutional
cooperation).  Funding may be available for some small joint
project.