Re: [Sheflug] Re: TopPage info for Sheffield Linux User Group

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Sat, 20 May 2000, Craig Andrews wrote:

> There's nothing wrong with the Windows API as such, and I might say that
> V Studio 97 is a damn fine way of quickly knocking together what could
> otherwise be a painful task.

Some aspects of VS are good, yep. A lot of it is awful though. I hate it
when MS do stuff like this: take OutLook, for example. Some of it is
fabulous (contacts management, etc.), and hopefully Evolution & whatever
the KDE equivilent is will get close. Some of it is terrible tho' -
offline editing, WSH (I know, not really OL, you know what I mean ;), and
that stuff I hope never sees the light of day again...

> I am not against using the Windows API in itself, but until kernel support
> for Win32 (and win16) binaries comes along (which may not be long...) and
> a Linux specific compiled version of the Windows API comes along (ie. no
> wrapper needed) I beleive that using an API specifically coded for the
> target OS is not an unreasonable expectation.

I'm afraid I still don't understand. Wine *is* compiled specifically for
Linux. Wine wraps X in the same way GTK does, you can't have it both ways.
It loads binaries and runs them. You're partly confusing Wine and Winelib,
too.

> If people are happy to use MS software using a wrapper ( again, Java VM
> springs to mind)

If you can compare Wine to JVMs, I can *certainly* compare it (more
favourably!!) to vmware ;))))

> RedHat have a definite view on QT, in that they refuse to support it
> because its not free enough (although how they can say that and still
> charge nigh on 80 quid for their 'free' software is beyond me... esp. when
> SuSE only charge 25 for more stuff!).

Hopefully this will change with qt2 - they can't call that non-free,
AFAIK. 

> What I'm saying is this.. Windows software, generally speaking, is
> licenced commercial software. It costs to own and use. Use the same
> software under Linux, in the same form (same binaries, etc) and the same
> restrictions apply. Bang, open source down the drain. 

Ahhh, different argument completely ;) One I agree with wholeheartedly,
although the dangers always exist no matter how software gets ported to
Linux.

Cheers,

Alex.


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