Re: Run Gnome -- On Windows (fwd)

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Brian Behlendorf <brian collab net> writes:

> And of course, three minutes after making my post, I see this.  All I can
> say is, cool, I hope the Gnome Foundation supports this whenever/wherever
> possible, and figures out a way to use the native Win32 calls where
> possible instead of X (requiring an X server, most of which are really
> slow on Windows) and Posix.  Especially since U/Win is not free software.
> 

I'm much more pleased with this effort than with the way XP is done
for OpenOffice (haven't read that whole thread, but I did read your
post). The approach here was to use a port of the layers underneath
GNOME to windows, rather than to create an XP compat layer on top of
them. This can result in lower overhead and better outside developer
compatibility than the OpenOffice approach.

That being said, I think the AbiWord approach of writing essentially
separate front-end code for each platform is also better than the
OpenOffice full XP API approach - it allows each platform to support
it's own unique features and progress at it's own rate, rather than
enforcing a least-common-denominator leavel of features, integration
and interoperability.

I guess that means that, unlike you, I am not so excited about using
native WIN32 calls. Of course, that's already done for the Gtk/Gdk
layer, and I doubt all that much of gnome uses native X calls, on the
other hand, use of POSIX calls that are not in win32 is pretty high
and glib can't solve everything (cygwin32 provides a free POSIX layer
for windows).

 - Maciej