In article <1062518524.636.16.camel@xterm.home>, Colin Michael Yates <colin.yates@orange.net> writes

Any chance of a downloadable exe?

any chance of a version that works on NT3.51 (on a 64Mb dx4-75 :-) ) -- robert w hall

Colin,

Any chance of a downloadable exe?

Jorge,

Before discussing Windows issues I thought you may like to know that Tom Huffman announced today on cinepaint-developers he has completed making Dillo into a Linux help system plug-in for CinePaint. I anticipate we'll start including Dillo with CinePaint in October.

We've been using the GIMP tips widget as our help system. Everyone is excited about Dillo as a big improvement. We plan to add an editing capability to Dillo so we can edit our help pages from within Dillo.

As I said, I'm not using Cygwin. Cygwin, clever as it is, has many drawbacks. I'm running Dillo natively on Windows.

It took me about 24 hours to accomplish that, to make some adjustments to compile Dillo in Microsoft Visual C++. Mostly it involved adding conditionals to change the names of included header files. Because your design didn't anticipate that a few of the POSIX calls you use are not available in Windows, it will take a little more work to replace those, to complete the job.

Although Windows is not 100% POSIX compatible, it is much more compatible than you seem to think. POSIX-based programs can be made to work on Windows without much trouble if you try. I haven't added any Windows API calls to the existing Dillo code.

Thanks for the link. Very interesting. You sound quite hostile to Windows users as a matter of personal politics.

May I ask, what does a policy of denying Dillo technical support to Windows users accomplish? Do you intend to prevent people from using software they have already paid for anyway? Should I throw away my copy of Windows 2000 to accommodate your political views? To what point? You can't think it could hurt Microsoft. You must know they aren't going to give me a refund.

If you change your mind and decide to answer my questions about what a few troublesome pieces of Dillo code are intended to do that would be nice. But, if you prefer not to it is no big deal. I've ported much more difficult programs without help.

Cheers,

Robin

P.S. For anyone doesn't know, I lead the GTK1 for Windows and the Mac GTK+OSX port projects in addition to CinePaint. --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes I'd be glad to, but the Windows port is not ready yet for release. I got as far as the splash screen. Still more bugs to fix. Encouraging though. In response to my request for technical information about Dillo to make it easier for me to debug the Windows port, Jorge sent me an email off-list last week in which he told me, "you're on your own" and directed me to his interview at http://www.dillo.org/interview.html for the reason why. What Jorge says there is he is opposed to supporting Windows users as a matter of personal politics. On Friday the 29th I sent an email to Jorge asking he reconsider, but he hasn't responded. The text of my message is below. I am not enclosing Jorge's message because I don't know if he intended that to be for the record. It seems that contributing to Dillo on Windows is unwelcome and requires forking it. I didn't come to the project with the idea that I would take it over and am a bit perplexed. I'm wondering how others who have been with the project longer may feel. Should Dillo for Windows go elsewhere? If yes, does anyone want to help with it? Thanks, Robin --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robin.Rowe@MovieEditor.com Hollywood, California www.CinePaint.org Free motion picture and still image editing software ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Rowe" <rower@MovieEditor.com> To: "Jorge Arellano Cid" <jcid@softhome.net> Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Dillo-dev] Dillo Windows port -

Robin.Rowe@MovieEditor.com Hollywood, California www.CinePaint.org Free motion picture and still image editing software

Given that Linux is about choice, and the fact that we Linux users moan so much about MS apps not running on Linux, it kind of seems hypocrtical to support *only* Linux! Fair enough having a personal agenda, but enforcing it on others (i.e. being hostile) isn't really on. I am quite dissapointed now. I moved away from Microsoft to get rid of this kind of thing :) On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 08:09, robert w hall wrote:

In article <02d101c371a7$137a5fd0$0200a8c0@tbird>, Robin Rowe <rower@MovieEditor.com> writes

...

Colin,

...

Any chance of a downloadable exe?

Yes I'd be glad to, but the Windows port is not ready yet for release. I got as far as the splash screen. Still more bugs to fix. Encouraging though.

In response to my request for technical information about Dillo to make it easier for me to debug the Windows port, Jorge sent me an email off-list last week in which he told me, "you're on your own" and directed me to his interview at http://www.dillo.org/interview.html for the reason why. What Jorge says there is he is opposed to supporting Windows users as a matter of personal politics.

Well, for me, one of the annoying things about M$ is it's policy of aggressive obsolescence. Support for NT3.51, NT4, win95, win98 has already gone - but these systems have life left in them and are appropriate to the smaller machines of their time. I would have thought supporting a browser to run on these earlier machines would in no way be helping the Gates empire to 'world domination', quite the reverse...

Bob

Personally, I think that Windows compatibility could be beneficial for Dillo. If the goal is to make the Internet more widely available on less-expensive (in other words, older) hardware, it seems to me that making Dillo available on the large number of old Win9x systems would help. Recently, my brother picked up a cheap PCMCIA network card, dragged my parents' decade-old laptop off the shelf, and plugged it into their home LAN. This system is old enough that we installed Windows 95 on it when the OS was new. At one point, my brother turned to me and asked if I knew of a good web browser to run on a really old system. I said, "Well, if this were Linux, I'd recommend Dillo, but..." We ended up installing Opera, which still took about a minute to start up, but ran reasonably well afterward. Of course, there is the matter of developer interest. If Jorge does not want to work on a Windows port, that's up to him. This is free software, after all! As I understand it, he has expressed no objection to the existence of a port, but he does not want to be involved in the process. That does not necessarily mean the project has to be forked, only that someone needs to be willing to maintain the Windows code - by which I mean (at the very least) following the development process and making sure that changes don't break Windows compatibility. Otherwise we'll end up with the same situation that killed Classic Mac OS support on Mozilla. Maybe it'll take time for the changes to work their way into the main branch. The code to embed Dillo in Sylpheed, for instance, was a series of patches for a long time before it was added, and the tabs/frames patch (or parts of it) will probably follow the same path. The same thing could happen with the Windows port. Kelson Vibber www.hyperborea.org

At 02:06 PM 9/3/2003, Robin Rowe wrote:

It seems clear that I must take Dillo for Windows elsewhere, that opinions are too firmly set for Windows users to feel welcome here soon.

OK... I've seen four replies to your question (not counting Jorge's). Three of them basically say, "Yes, let's port to Windows!" One simply states that nothing forces Jorge to support it and offers no opinion on porting one way or the other. Additionally, several people replied to your earlier technical questions to the list, and several people expressed interest in your progress. From where I'm sitting, it looks like you've been *very* welcome here, with one exception. Have people been sending you hate mail off-list? Or had you made up your mind before you posted your question? Kelson Vibber www.hyperborea.org

Hi there, Unfortunately, I find myself compelled to answer to Mr. Robin Rowe's attacks, FUD, and all the false assertions he did about myself. Although I knew very few people would take the time to read the interview and then compare it to what Mr. Rowe says I said, I expected, from the long time you know me on this list, not to beleive his attacks without a hesitation. I'll make quotes and comment them. Please make your own comparisons and decide. Of course, you can browse the mailing list archives for the full threads: http://news.gmane.org/thread.php?group=gmane.comp.web.dillo.devel (search for September 2003) -- I'm quoting my missing emails, in full, here. Once I read that the only way to stop FUD was to rebate it point by point, so here I go:

Now, if you want to make dillo run on M$ Windoze natively, you're on your own. Some of the reasons may be found in the interview page:

http://www.dillo.org/interview.html

Thanks for the link. Very interesting. You sound quite hostile to Windows users as a matter of personal politics.

Please go to the interview and read it. If not at least search for these keywords: "windo" and "user".

May I ask, what does a policy of denying Dillo technical support to Windows users accomplish?

Unless using CYGWIN we have no Windows users because there's not a working native port yet. How can I be blamed for not supporting non-existent users?

Do you intend to prevent people from using software they have already paid for anyway?

_Ridiculous_. How can I prevent all (or some) of the windows users using their OS of choice. Mr. Rowe puts me as if I was trying to actively deny these people the right to use their SW. How? Turning off theiy machines from my house? Has anyone ever read such an statement from me in this mailing list? I read it again and again and can't understand why I'm bashed this way.

Should I throw away my copy of Windows 2000 to accommodate your political views?

Please, please, read the interview and search for such an statement. Incredible, Mr. Rowe keeps inventing implicit assertions, and then charging them on me. I've never said that. You can chose whatever OS you want. I'm only the project leader of a Free-SW project that aims for POSIX compliance. I even suggested him to try the recipe Kelson prepared about running dillo on Windows with CIGWIN. (http://www.hyperborea.org/software/dillo/cygwin.html)

To what point?

I don't know, it was Mr. Rowe who invented this false accusation and blamed me for it.

You can't think it could hurt Microsoft.

And he suggests what I think too! Amazing.

You must know they aren't going to give me a refund.

Please search for the keyword "refund" in the interview. You will not find it. It is just another invention that I'm accused for by Mr. Rowe.

If you change your mind and decide to answer my questions about what a few troublesome pieces of Dillo code are intended to do that would be nice.

Gentle words after the bashing. (this can confuse the careless reader, and make him think he's going through valid statements.)

But, if you prefer not to it is no big deal.

Interesting. Then why did he take the time to prepare a set of false statements to attack me?

I've ported much more difficult programs without help.

To some extent, this is a compliment (I believe in Raph Levien's words that "SW design is a constant struggle against complexity"), but frankly I think his intention wasn't that. ...and as if this wasn't material enough, here are some other quotes from the next emails he sent:

In response to my request for technical information about Dillo to make it easier for me to debug the Windows port, Jorge sent me an email off-list last week in which he told me, "you're on your own" and directed me to his interview at http://www.dillo.org/interview.html for the reason why. What Jorge says there is he is opposed to supporting Windows users as a matter of personal politics.

Another lie! He says: "Jorge says there is he is opposed to supporting Windows users as a matter of personal politics". Here's my email: <q> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Robin Rowe wrote:

Jorge,

I have Dillo built now as a native Windows VC++ 6 project and am debugging it. Seems to be my unstable 1.14 version of GTK for Windows that is causing Dillo to hang on load. By the way, I'm the new GTK1 for Windows maintainer. Tor and GIMP for Windows are moving to GTK2, but CinePaint is staying with GTK1.

Can we talk about Dillo design portability a bit?

Dillo is designed to run on POSIX compatible systems. If CYGWIN provides that, let it be (as stated in Kelson's doc). Now, if you want to make dillo run on M$ Windoze natively, you're on your own. Some of the reasons may be found in the interview page: http://www.dillo.org/interview.html (search for "windows", is quite a large text). Cheers Jorge.- </q> ------------------------------------- and here's my previous answer to him: ------------------------------------- <q> On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Robin Rowe wrote:

Hi. I'm the project leader for CinePaint, an open source paint program used mainly by the motion picture industry. Our code was branched from GIMP in 1998.

Hi! Yes, I knew about your project by the time we were applying to LinuxFund...

How would the Dillo project feel about Dillo being embedded in another application as a help browser?

Very good. In fact it has been done in the past with the Sylpheed-claws email client: it embeds dillo for secure HTML mail viewing. In fact we're working in a remote control plugin for dillo to allow better support for this kind of functionality. Currently applications can launch Dillo and let the user navigate the help docs without problems. Now, if the app. wants to provide context sensitive help, it needs to end dillo and launch another instance to make it display the required page (quite fast, but not optimal), and here's where we're improving it.

We're looking for a new help system browser and considering Dillo. We are impressed how compact your implementation is. We only need a limited set of HTML features: links, images, tables, bullet lists, number lists, headings, ordinary text, bold, and italic. In these features we need the browser to be absolutely stable. Any issues there?

None! You'll hardly find a browser that's more stable. And for any issue that may arise, you can email us back for support.

We support all platforms, including Windows. One of the first things I would intend to do is port Dillo to Windows. I saw in your archives that you had made some effort in that direction, but it seemed to peter out. What are the problems?

If you need dillo to run on the dark side, take a look at: http://www.hyperborea.org/software/dillo/cygwin.html Cheers Jorge.- </q> ----------- Now, please excuse me if I don't want to answer any other email from Mr. Robin Rowe. I refuse to answer to Mr. Rowe because he has not the minimal manners to communicate politely and objectively (at least with me), and he attacks me upon false statements. ----------- Now, onto the technical reasons why I decided to aim dillo for POSIX and not for Windows (the use of advanced features of POSIX is a fact documented in a paper I wrote the year 2000). From Dillo project objectives perspective: The project objectives are: * The democratization of Internet information access. * Security and personal privacy. * High software efficiency. 1.- The democratization of Internet information access. Windows requires a modern machine to run (at least supported versions of it), and the pay of a licence fee. People with such a HW/SW configuration already have the means to afford their internet access. Now considering what happened to Netscape when trying to run on Windiws platforms it was quite clear there was no much future on that line. 2.- Security and personal privacy. Definitively a hard conflict with the windows platforms. A lot has been written about this topic, but let me suggest: http://www.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm 3.- High software efficiency. A carefully crafted browser, with every single bit of speed we could think of, running over a bloated monster that makes modern computers feel slow? Now, as a tiny client for help documents, it may be, but Explorer is already loaded so... If someone someday makes dillo run on windows, I'll ask him to warn the users that they don't have the Security and personal privacy the original Dillo strives for (one of the best ways to spy any browser is to do in the internal firewall. You have all the HTTP traffic, the user IDs, etc.) Judge yourselves, I've had enough of it. Sincerely Jorge.-

-- En reponse de "Re: [Dillo-dev] Dillo on Windows fork" de Robin Rowe, le 04-Sep-2003 :

Jorge,

That you have so many derogatory names for Windows doesn't make a Windows developer feel welcome.

Many, many, many people came to this list, asking question, proposing patches, etc. All of them were welcome and answered nicely. But you're in a Free Software community: if you can't stand the heat, if you can't keep a low profile, scoot. Why do you feel so personal about windows anyway?

Either a native Windows port is welcome (that means no cygwin in case you don't understand), you want any patches I create for building Dillo as a Microsoft Visual C++ project, want to work together, and are happy to answer what technical points you can regardless of operating system I use -- or you don't.

I already explained why, personally, I did not want a windows port integrated in Dillo. A fork is ok, though. There's probably way too much changes between Posix and Windows for the two projects to live together anyway.

I am willing to admit that I have no idea what you are talking about in general. Your previous email, the one from last week that did not attempt to answer my technical questions about Dillo as it is implemented now, told me that "if you want to make dillo run on M$ Windoze natively, you're on your own", and pointed me for the reason to an article whose

Dillo's web site has plenty of references about why Jorge (and Dillo's developers agree, I think) think Free Software is what he wnats to develop for. Not any open source project: Free Software.

only reference to Windows is a rant against "Micro$oft (windoze)", could have led me to the wrong conclusion. All your talk today about having no Windows users currently, cygwin, posix, articles, attacks, FUD, false assertions, lies, the dark side (as you call running Dillo on Windows) and so forth only confuses things further.

Now you're the one being offensive here.

What do you really want me to do?

If you have technical question, ask them, you'll be answered. Or not. Anyway: TAKE THIS DISCUSSION OFF THE LIST! This is a development list, not a fighting list between you and Jorge. This list has a long history of moderation and politeness, and I like it like that. It was never about Jorge, anyway. Didn't you get it? Jorge just happens to be the maintainer and lead developer of Dillo's current main tree. And he's pretty good at it too. But if he's not good enough and somebody feels like forking, developers will go with the most active and appealing project. You don't need Jorge or any of us to tell you what to do. But since you need clarification, here goes: - if you have any technical question, ask them in the list. Politely. - I don't think Jorge will ever consider merging your patches, or any patch about a Windows port. - nobody can or will ever want to prevent you to fork or use Dillo's code in any way you want, provided it's compatible with the GPL. Please, please, nobody answers this message (or this thread in the list). You can answer to me personally if you want to, but I think everything's clear now. Good luck with your project. Best, EG

Hi,

That does not necessarily mean the project has to be forked, only that someone needs to be willing to maintain the Windows code - by which I mean (at the very least) following the development process and making sure that changes don't break Windows compatibility. Otherwise we'll end up with the same situation that killed Classic Mac OS support on Mozilla.

AFAIK, the port of Sylpheed-Claws to Windows uses gtk 1.3.x (which is closer to gtk 2.x than to gtk 1.2.x). If someone wants to port Dillo to Windows, he can look at how Sylpheed-Claws I/O infrastructure was ported to Windows. Sylpheed-Claws does not use pthreads, but it forks to access to POP3 mailboxes, as Dillo forks to do DNS lookups, IIRC. We have a CVS branch for the Windows port. I think, if someone does not already have the experience of porting to Windows, looking at Claws versions can be very helpful, as our port is done by a very knowledgeable guy. -- Melvin Hadasht