From: Dom Lachowicz (domlachowicz@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 18:13:26 EDT
> Until this post I thought using even the Windows
> port of Gtk 2 would be
> too hard because of Gnumeric dependencies of Gnome.
>
> However given that Gnome is reported to have been
> ported, I guess that
> Gnumeric itself could be ported too.
<rant>
Importantly: GNOME2 has *not* been ported to run on
top of the Win32-native Glib2/GTK+2/Pango/etc
available from here: (http://www.dropline.net/gtk/).
It has been ported on top of Cygwin, which is a
Unix/POSIX emulation layer for Win32. This means that
any Cygwin app needs the Cygwin DLLs installed on
their system in addition of the Glib2/GTK+2/etc...
DLLs. And these versions of GTK+2/Glib2/etc... are
built against the Cygwin packages which (most notably)
means that those GTK+ programs require a running
XServer. The "coolness" of getting a POSIX program to
run inside of a (several hundred MB) POSIX emulation
layer -excepting the novelty geek factor- eludes me.
This, in my opinion, would make this *much* less cool
than a direct Mingw port running directly on top of
Win32. Only through a Mingw type build can we get the
average Win32 person to try out Gnumeric. See, for
example, the hugely successful WinDia, WinGimp, or
WinGaim projects that don't require Cygwin in order to
run on Win32. They all come with small Win32
installers and are painless to install, set up, and
run. To boot, they look and feel like native apps to a
large degree.
Many of the Gnome2 libraries and dependencies can
currently run "natively" on top of Win32, using Gtk2,
Glib2, Gnet, and the like as their portability layer.
This, IMO, is the right way to go. If we're seriously
interested in this, we've got to figure out which ones
don't, and why.
</rant>
Cheers,
Dom
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