Mail Archives: cygwin/2001/06/26/15:10:39
I get this kind of response a lot, probably because I'm not being clear
enough. When most people use the term GNOME, they mean a desktop
environment, but as I have learned more about GNOME, I've come to
understand that that is not what it is. The GNOME project happens to
include 2 desktop manager options, but they don't even include a wm, they
just require that the wm meet certain GNOME compliance parameters.
Furthermore, GNOME applications can run properly under KDE (partly due to
cooperation between GNOME/KDE teams). To me, what GNOME is, primarily, is
an application development framework.
When I say, I want to port GNOME to native Windows, I mean the GNOME
libraries. I should be able to take a GNOME application such as Gnumeric,
compile it under Windows, and have it run. Essentially, then, you could
say that a GNOME app might also be a Windows app with a single source tree
(using Cygwin, but not needing X). Alternatively, you might say that
native Windows had become acceptable as a GNOME-compliant wm.
Theoretically, this should not be too troublesome since pretty much all
the underlying GNOME technologies (GTK+, ORBit, etc.) are cross-platform
now and run on native Windows. Even the new default database they just
adopted is already Linux/Windows.
The primary reason all this matters to me is that I'm working with a team
of people wishing to make a cross-platform, GPL-licensed database
front-end, and GNOME's libgal libraries would be a very nice thing to
include. If we do that, we may as well make it a full-blown GNOME app (and
why not), but it MUST also run on Windows. As a side effect, we would be
paving the way for porting pretty much the entire GNOME office suite which
would expose a much larger audience to the wonders of free software (those
not yet interested in trying Linux).
-----Original Message-----
From: Tor Lillqvist [SMTP:tml AT iki DOT fi]
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 4:03 AM
To: jorgens AT coho DOT net
Subject: Re: Any hints porting from *nix to Cygwin + Native Windows GTK+
Steve Jorgensen writes:
> BTW - if someone knows of an existing project to port GNOME to Cgywin
and
> native Windows GTK+, let me know so I can just join them and not waste
my
> time reinventing the wheel.
I don't want to be rude, but why would one want to run GNOME on
cygwin? With some *very* large oversimplification...:
The purpose of GNOME is, more or less, to make a Unix+X11 system look
and feel more like Windows, kinda (with CORBA instead of
ActiveSomething, etc.). The purpose of Cygwin is to have a Unix
workalike on Windows (jus a Unix API).
(As I said, that is a gross simplification. But you get the idea.)
If you put GNOME on Cygwin, you have a Windows lookalike on top of a
Unix lookalike on top of Windows. An interesting exercise, but useful?
If you are desperate for Unix, why not use real Unix? If you want
Windows-like features, why not use real Windows?
Please note that I am not saying that either GNOME or cygwin is a
stupid idea. I use Cygwin all the time, and would probably run GNOME
if I happened to be using a (sufficiently powerful) Unix dekstop
machine.
--tml
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