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Message-ID: <01C0FE35.2892B940.jorgens@coho.net>
From: Steve Jorgensen <jorgens AT coho DOT net>
Reply-To: "jorgens AT coho DOT net" <jorgens AT coho DOT net>
To: "cygwin AT cygwin. Com (E-mail)" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: Any hints porting from *nix to Cygwin + Native Windows GTK+
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 11:42:49 -0700
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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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