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SolveSpace (open source 2D/3D CAD) working on Windows 2000 (2025)

github.com
40 points·by ruevs·3 miesiące temu·6 comments

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ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
Someone at Microsoft thinks the same ;-)

https://github.com/microsoft/edit

If you have Windows 11 it comes with this new (open source) `edit` written in Rust - open a command prompt and type `edit`.

This is somewhat amusing, considering all the bloat that it comes with otherwise. Even `notepad` has become rather... feature full... it has tabs, spell checking and AI...
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
I wondered the same and actually tried it on Windows 95 - it will be a bit more work. The bottom screen shots in this comment https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1036#issueco... are the missing APIs on Win95...

I expect the build for Windows 2000 may work on NT 4.0, because it has OpenGL, but Windows 3.11 with Win32s will never work - because it does not have OpenGL(I think...).

And Unicode will also be a problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_in_Microsoft_Windows
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
By the way this creation of his, from July 1990: https://www.fourmilab.ch/evilempire/ is very relevant here, but we are getting off-topic :-)

SpeakFreely was his as well - a very early encrypted, VoIP app.

And this: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ ... As I said - an interesting person :-)
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
One more fun fact:

SolveSpace officially is supported on Windows (Vista-11), Linux and macOS, and compiles with Emscripten and runs in a browser.

However with a little effort it also compiles for and runs on Windows 2000.

https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1036#issueco...

So it runs on all the majour platforms from the last 26 years (excluding MacOS 9).
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
And 6-7 years later the `WinSxS` directory was born and these days it is tens of gigabytes.

`Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase`

In an administrator command prompt. You can thank me when it's finished ;-)
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
One more fun fact:

SolveSpace officially is supported on Windows (Vista-11), Linux and macOS, and compiles with Emscripten and runs in a browser.

However with a little effort it also compiles for and runs on Windows 2000.

https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1036#issueco...

So it runs on all the majour platforms from the last 26 years (excluding MacOS 9).
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
Is this critique or praise of his character? ;-)
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
Join SolveSpace development? ;-)
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
GNU Unifont is 973KiB, and we also have the vector font unicode.lff.gz at 1.03MB.

So the web version of SolveSpace is literally one megabyte of WebAssembly.
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
But does it run etirely locally in the browser after downloading a total of 2993991 bytes (less than 3 megabytes) of code? ;-)
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
Had to Google this one :-)

Since SolveSpace has a helix tool that can "extrude" any sketch along a helix it should be doable.
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
Oh! This is very bad! It should not look like this.

I've tried Firefox, Chrome and Edge on Windows; Firefox and Chrome an Android phone and tablet and it renders correctly - like the desktop version.

What browser are you using? On what OS? Perhaps the web page is zoomed in/out in the browser? Scaling options in the browser? HiDPI screen with scaling?

Would you be willing to open an issue on GitHub with the details? Or just post them here.
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
The last Autodesk software I've used was AutoCAD 2000 (released in 1999). And I've not followed them since.

Perhaps they have indeed become "one of the worst corp. in the world of software", but in the early years they were very interesting. The founder of Autodesk, John Walker (he died in 2024) wrote/edited and interesting book on the early years: "The Autodesk File" https://fourmilab.ch/autofile/
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
Had to Google this one :-)

Since SolveSpace has a helix tool that can "extrude" any sketch along a helix it should be doable.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dreaded-double-helix-tutorial...
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
If you get lost press `f` to "fit" the current drawing to the screen.

By the way working in SolveSpace is extremely fast if you use keyboard shortcuts - almost everything can be dome with a shortcut key. No need to search for them - you can learn them by looking in the menus.

A very short "crash course" on the navigation is in the "Quick start:" section at the bottom of the download page. https://solvespace.com/download.pl The "demo video" on the home page is also a great starting point.

After that the "Tutorials" and "Reference" go in as much detail as one may want :-)
ruevs
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
Intentional indeed. It is GNU Unifont - a 973KiB file that covers practically all of Unicode. In a bitmap font, platform independent, self contained, small. Practically all that SolveSpace strives to be.

https://www.unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html

Perhaps I've been using computers for too long but I actually like the non anti-aliased "sharp" and "pixely" look :-)