Teemu Likonen wrote: > Tony Mechelynck (2008-11-25 09:00 +0100) wrote: > >> SeaMonkey and Thunderbird are not only open-source and free-software >> but also cross-platform, maybe not as much as Vim but certainly more >> than Emacs.) > > Your knowledge about different platforms is likely greater than mine and > I'm curious about this question of "being more cross-platform". How is > it measured in the open-source world? Is it about supporting different > operating systems? Or about different CPU architectures?
I think it's all of the above. But it's not about what you list on your website: it's about what actually works. In effect, it becomes about working on systems that are different enough to require programmer effort, and within the context of the type of software being discussed. It's about how many systems, out of all those in existence, the user can compile and run the code on without having to know how to hack it. I.e. For much software, different architectures are not an issue--you just run it through a different compiler and it works. Though code that relies on the endianness of the architecture will be less cross-platform than code that doesn't. For things like compilers, many more aspects of the architectures need to be considered! Similarly, getting many things to work on an Amiga as well as Unix requires a lot of effort, so that distinction needs to be considered when evaluating 'cross-platform-ness'. But not necessarily for all code: for a simple filter, the distinction simply may not be relevant. > Or officially distributing more different ready-to-run builds? I don't think it's that. It's a property of the codebase, not a measure of the community's level of support for different systems. > SeaMonkey > ========= > Windows (32bit), Mac OS X, Linux (x86), Linux/x86_64, OS/2, > Solaris 10 (SPARC), AIX 5L, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, IRIX, > Solaris and BeOS / magnussoft ZETA > > Vim > === > Unix, MS-DOS, MS-Windows, Amiga, OS/2, Macintosh, QNX, Agenda, Sharp Zaurus, > HP Jornada, MS-Windows CE, Compaq Tru64 Unix on Alpha, Open VMS, RISC OS, > MorphOS, Cygwin (console), Cygwin (with GTK GUI) > > Emacs > ===== > GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, AIX 4.3.3 and higher, Mac OS X, MS DOS, > MS Windows, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, SunOS, Ultrix, > Berkeley Unix (BSD) 4.1-4.4, Esix, Microport, SCO Unix, > System V releases 0 to 4.0.4, Uniplus 5.2, Xenix So...how to compare? Well, Vim lists very broadly 'Unix', which quite probably covers the BSDs, Solaris, System V, SCO, Linux, and others. They're not different enough for Vim to list them separately. But notice that Vim has Amiga and Macintosh which the others don't go near. Seamonkey has BeOS which the others don't touch. Emacs probably works in Cygwin, though it isn't listed separately, but doesn't go near OS/2. You could get better lists to compare by going through each and if that platform actually works for either of the other pieces of software, adding it to their lists. It's not without difficulties, either, but it would help. Looking at the lists myself, and having a fairly limited knowledge of OSes and architectures, I'd say to me it looks like Vim is most cross-platform, followed a fair way behind by SeaMonkey, closely followed by Emacs. Ben. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
