[From nobody Wed Nov 12 18:59:34 2008
From: Karl Kleinpaste <karl@kleinpaste.org>
To: gnomesword-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:19:36 -0500
Message-ID: <vxkfxlw66jr.fsf@mesquite.kleinpaste.org>
Subject: GnomeSword, Windows, and mingw
MIME-Version: 1.0

Peter and Matthew -- not the apostles; rather, the folks who take part
here in GS development, refdoc and ransom1982 -- have been cajoling me
to put effort into porting GS to the native Windows world via mingw.

To me, this is a huge undertaking.  I am decidedly not a Windows kinda
guy -- I've lived in the land of UNIX and Linux since 1982 -- and once
upon a time Cygwin was a minor mental breakthrough for me.  ("You screw
around with the filesystem to give a false impression of /?  Ouch.")

Are there others on this list who would be interested in helping pick up
the gauntlet of moving GS into the native Windows environment?

There is a small army of reasons for wanting to do this:

- The existing Windows UI blows chunks, sucks dead worms through a
  straw, and kicks dead whales down a beach.

- The Sword Project as a whole suffers very badly at the hands of
  reviewers when all they see is the Windows UI.  Like it or not, Linux
  is a minority player.  No matter how cool and useful we developers of
  GS, BT, and BD make our UIs, Windows is what reviewers see first --
  often only.

- Cygwin is really useful, but Cygwin usage is even more a minority
  player than Linux: You have to [a] like the Linux environment, [b] be
  stuck living in Windows, yet [c] choose to drag Linux-isms along.

- Cygwin is sluggish.  It works fine, but the emulation layer is slow.

- e-Sword just came out with its version 8, for which they are touting
  their newfound belief in localization.  GS has been doing localization
  for years!  Peter considers this (and so do I) an embarrassment -- we
  are *so much more capable* than e-Sword.

- Again on the "like it or not" front...  Windows is where community is
  most readily built.  Windows users represent easily an order of
  magnitude more users than any other platform.

I've been nearly alone on feature design and coding in GnomeSword for
rather a long time.  Honestly, I need a break, I have other irons that I
must put into the fire, but this is becoming clear as Something That
Simply Must Be Done.  We must kill the Windows UI beast, or at least
provide a really good alternative to it in a way that's natural to
Windows users.

Are there developers here who are actually willing to dedicate the time
with me needed to do this, willing to engage the problem toward a
solution, in a way that won't take a year to complete?

mildly desperate,
--karl
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