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It does seem that there are no Windows versions of several important
crystallographic programs/packages but I may be not up to date --
does anyone have a list of those that are available?
A list of what is unavailable for windows would be more interesting, and
shorter?? So far I missed:
arp/warp
sharp
solve/resolve
mosflm (didn't find a binary exe, have seen screenshots under cygwin/x)
whatcheck (didn't find a binary exe, thought I saw someone with a
windows version once)
... which perhaps shows my main interest is not PX. If you spend most of
your time working with structures in phaser/molrep/shelx/coot/O/refmac
then they're all ported already. Anyone arguing for OpenSource must
realise that by giving away their source code they risk their program
being ported to windows ;-)
What programs do you miss? Are they open source?
Many in the small molecule and powder communities migrated when windows
went 32bit and the 640 K limit disappeared (eg: ~11 years ago with
windows 95/nt versus dos+windows 3.1). Programs which didn't make the
transition mostly died out, hint hint. A motivation for choosing unix
systems for PX was 3D graphics and faster computers with bigger
memories, but nowadays the masses have caught up and it is not so clear
what is to be gained from a technical point of view. The lack of
extensive documentation on the web for "setting things up" on windows
might mean that most people figured it out themselves so easily that
there was no motivation to help others? As a developer, once you've
ported to one windows box you've very likely ported to most of the
windows boxes in existence.
It is strange that no one has dared to speak up for windows. A quote
from Eric Raymond a couple of years ago:
"The biggest obstacle between open-source software and world domination
is not Microsoft, it's our own endemic cluelessness about how to design
software that won't make nontechnical users run screaming". Read more at
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html. While I can happily
get work done on linux/mac/vms, I was recently very upset to find out
that windows is the only OS which talks to a shiny sony mp3 player, but
that is a different religous war. As much as you might hate windows (or
sony) it is unlikely to go away anytime soon.
Coot and all of the parts of ccp4 that I tried appear to work great on a
windows laptop, as does shelx. Many thanks to all those who have taken
the time to support windows! I wonder what the download statistics are
for ccp4 on windows versus other versions?
Jon
