Re: Windows & Psychtoolbox

>My lab (me, assistant, & grad student) are gearing up to use the
>psychtoolbox under Windows 2000. David's incarnation of
>screendemo.m did not crash, though I'm not sure about timing
>accuracy yet. My questions:
>
>1. Do you expect screen.dll to support multiple monitors in the near future?


I wouldn't bet on it, although the answer really depends on how easy it is
for the Windows OS to support multiple monitors. On the Mac, this
support was almost transparent to us. If Windows makes it easy to
direct OS calls to a second monitor, then the changes required in the
source would be easy and you could probably do it yourselves in the
OpenWindow code.

>
>2. Is there any chance you've got a TimeVideo equivalent for the PC
>under development?

Nope. Eventually ScreenTest (MATLAB version of TimeVideo) should
work on Windows.

>
>3. I'd like to be of help as a regular tester for the Windows code.
>I don't think I'm likely to be of serious help writing C code at
>this point, but I can spend a bit of time testing things and writing
>matlab code. Do you want to put me in touch with your Windows
>programmer (is there one yet?).

Yes, thanks. There isn't one yet but interviews are scheduled. The
real answer to how fast things
happen for windows is that if we manage to hire someone good, they'll
happen pretty fast.

>
>4. OR...would you tell me to buy a Mac instead? I'd like to see the
>Windows version become viable, am willing to help, but I don't have
>the resources to push through major obstacles.

I'm still buying Macs. I think the answer depends on what you want
to do. The current Windows version
will display images and patterns OK. The timing is crummy and we
don't know how to check for a character
without actually reading it. Those would be the first things to get
fixed but how long it will take
depends on how hard the underlying problems really are. I wish I
could give you a sharper answer.

>
>5. Your strategic outlook: are new features likely to be added first
>to the Mac version, then ported to Windows, for the foreseeable
>future? I.e. do you want to keep Mac as the master, with any code
>that runs under Windows guaranteed to run under Mac as well? Or
>would it be OK to see temporary divergences of capabilities as new
>features are added to one or the other platform?

It's been a long time since we added any important new features to
the Mac version. Most changes are
just to keep it running as new hardware and OS versions appear. Our
vision is to make the two
platforms compatible at the MATLAB level. Probably to do that we'll
have to remove features from
the Mac version rather than add them. Once we get compatibility,
we'll probably try pretty hard
to keep it. The other possibility is that we'll try to provide the
ability to test for capabilities and
let the programs at the MATLAB level handle divergences gracefully (or not).

Sorry this is so wishy-washy an answer, but I've gotten a bit
cautious about promising too much
for the Windows version. Neither Denis nor I can really commit to
doing it ourselves and without
that it is hard to judge how fast things will move forward.

DB