On 4/16/07, Alexey Eremenko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
hi all !
I'm going to describe a new concept. A very controversial one.
Usage Scenario:
We (the OSS community) have a great website copier, named "httrack",
with 4 versions of it:
1. httrack - this is the engine + text-mode (console) menu-based
frontend. Stable.
2. WinHTTrack - desktop version of the above with Windows GUI. Stable
and mature. But we can't use it without an emulator. (read: Wine)
3. WebHTTrack - Linux version with Web-based GUI - buggy version - not
recommended.
4. KHTTrack - a KDE frontend to httrack. unmaintained & alpha.
The problem:
1. httrack is stable, but it works only in console mode.
3 and 4 are both unstable, so I would vote against including them in the distro.
2. This looks interesting.... Do you remember "Google Picasa" ?
They have built a Windows-only package, optimized it for wine, and
pooof ! it works on Linux !
In case of WinHTTrack, The main advantage of doing this, is that we
receive both stable and mature product.
I think there *can* be a new class of Linux applications, that follow
the "Google Picasa" storyline, Namely: Windows applications, that are
tested and developed for Wine !
They could get packaged for openSUSE distro, as all the components are
Open-Source, and in their rpm dependency database, there could be only
one thing: "wine" !
The main problem with Wine, is that not all Windows software works on
it, but this problem is resolved, when Windows software is targetted
at "Wine". With such an approach wine makes it for a stable platform.
Both Wine and applications, such as WinHTTrack are open-source, and if
that application gets running stable on wine, we could really create
such a package. That package could even modify some of wine's
parameters to work better, and integrate into openSUSE better.
What do you think of this new, revolutionary, concept ?
This is a real usage scenario, link: (Please discuss here, not in Bugzilla.)
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=264686
P.S. The Wine team think they are: " Wine is not emulator " while I
think that wine is the: " WINdows Emulator"
I've never used Wine, or any other windows compatibility tool. (Not
sure what that says.)
Anyway I use cygwin all the time to let me run Linux code specifically
compiled (or ported) for cygwin on a windows box. It is an extremely
popular and successful solution but as I gather for wine, it sometimes
takes a little tweaking to the source code to get things to work.
I definitely think it would be logical to have a Windows Compatibility
tool that allowed Windows source code to easily be ported to Linux.
If Wine fits that goal, fantastic.
FYI: For good or bad cygwin requires the use of a dll. That dll is
licensed as pure GPL, not LGPL. That means all programs that use the
cygwin dll are covered by the GPL. I don't know enough about Wine to
know if there is an equivalent issue or not.
Greg
--
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century
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