Message-ID: <8D53104ECD0CD211AF4000A0C9D60AE30145EC87@probe-2.acclaim-euro.net>
From: Shawn Hargreaves <ShawnH AT Probe DOT co DOT uk>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: X and GNOME ports.
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 11:06:07 +0100
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

>> Is anyone planning to port X and GNOME to DOS?
>
> We need a working port of X before we begin considering software that
> depends on X.  Personally, I think it would be great if we had an X
> port.

I agree. I'm sceptical about the chances for porting a complete desktop
environment like Gnome, though, because these use a lot of different
server/client processes and consist of many small programs working 
together. You'd have to implement almost all the hard parts of Unix 
(at a bare minimum a good fork(), and some IPC routines), to get these 
programs working.

I think a more realistic goal, at least to start with, would be to
treat each X app as a single DOS program and launch the X server
specifically to run it. If I remember right, that is how the djgpp
1.x port of X worked, and it would allow running lots of nice programs
like Gimp, Netscape, KWord...

No matter how it is done, though, this will not exactly be a trivial
porting effort :-)


	Shawn Hargreaves.