Re: Win32 port

[<bob thestuff net>]

Ah. I understand.

Many people have already tried an explorer replacement. LightStep is an
example. They found out that there's undocumented relationships between
apps and the shell that when arnt implemented correctly (hard to do
without dox) cause windows to become even less stable then with explorer.
thats strike 1.

strike 2. You probably want the gnome panel and gmc to act as the shell
for windows. The lack of integration between windows and gmc/panel would
make it a whole lot less usable. The menu's wouldnt work properly. For
example windows link files. It would show the wingnome apps, but not the
windows apps. unless the user added the .desktop files themselves which
defeats most of the usuability improvements.

its whole lot of work for only alittle gain to do a gnome shell
replacement for windows.


Now as to your model, porting is out for most companies. they write the
app for one platform and one platform only. And that is windows. getting
them to write it first for linux, then port it to windows is flat out of
the question. Now if we could provide them a way to create a windows app
easier then what they already can, they will adopt it, and once their code
is over to that api, it can be much more easier ported to linux when the
time comes. If we would provide them with gnome-libs for windows, they
could code their apps more easily, but still windows only for the non gui
stuff, and when the time comes to switch, the windows only stuff would be
far less then it would straight port. The only problem with this idea is,
microsoft would have to not step in, and squash it before it got too big.
It would be a sugnificant threat to microsofts dominance in their eyes and
would be squashed. If we could find a way around that problem, things
would work out very nicely.

On Tue, 6 Jun 2000 lebarre@us.ibm.com wrote:

> I don't think you understood the model.  Given the situation of a large app
> being developed under one OS, then ported to another, I would prefer a
> Linux to Win32.  Winelib is fine for what it does, but I don't want to see
> everything "dumbed down" to the Windows requirements.
> 
> To go back to the beginning, I was suggesting using Gnome as a replacement
> desktop shell instead of Explorer.  I've thought this would probably
> require the Win32 port of XFree86 (why re-invent that part?)
> 
> 
> 
> James E. LaBarre
> (914) 784-5653
> tieline-863-5653
> 
> 
> bob@thestuff.net on 06/06/2000 03:24:09 PM
> 
> To:   James LaBarre/Hawthorne/Contr/IBM@IBMUS
> cc:   gnome-list@gnome.org
> Subject:  Re: Win32 port
> 
> 
> 
> So you want to make stable/free apps unstable and require a costly os?
> sounds like a bad jump. :)
> When going from Linux/Unix to Windows, you loose the main things that made
> the app good in the first place.
> 
>