nanogui: WineCE, final answer?
Subject:
Re: WineCE, final answer?
From:
Rob Wehrli ####@####.####
Date:
7 Mar 2001 00:55:46 -0000
Message-Id: <3AA58772.EF266669@azpower.com>
Robert Hartley wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to find out what sort of interest there would be in
> stripping down the Windows emulation stuff from WINE (www.winehq.org) so
> that it would be equivalent to WinCE or PocketWindows.
WINE isn't a "superset" of WinCE or PocketWindows...so you won't be
stripping it down to get one or the other. While I'm not as familiar
with PocketWindows, Windows CE is a Win32 implementation using UNICODE
while WINE, the last I paid any attention to it, was a Win16 emulator.
I'm not sure how much work you'll need to do to complete such a task,
but it doesn't sound like a good thing for an embedded space...simply
because the size sounds like it would be too big. Microwindows is
already a sufficient "Win32" clone for smaller Linux systems.
Also, with WINE...you'd likely find yourself limited to the x86
especially when trying to run something like Word 6.0 on the target.
...yet another reason to use MicroWin over other choices...platform
portability!
>
> Would the users represented by the people on this mail list be
> interested in the ability to run Windows CE applications on a Linux
> based PDA?
It would be nice to be able to do so, just so that one might leverage
the number of cool things written for CE...but remember that CE also
introduces A LOT of NEW API to Win32 that I'm fairly sure have not been
implemented in WINE. I may be a bit out of date though, I last used
WINE on Solaris and Linux in 1996...and WABI on SCO at that same time.
>
> (Please note I am not asking anyone here to do the work, simply whether
> or not they would find it useful if someone else were to have done it
> for them.)
>
> Thanks very much for your encouragement,
Hope that I haven't discouraged you any from attempting something
useful. I'm thinking that you may want to consider researching the
differences between WINE and WinCE a bit more before taking on some new
tasking related to it...also, note that emulations are typically quite a
bit slower than native environments (one exception that I know of is the
Mac emulator running on a fast Linux PC is faster than any Mac I ever
saw!) and would be especially slow on "resource constrained" embedded
Linux systems...and, of course, processors like the 328 used in Palms
would die trying to do anything useful in such an environment.
>
> Rob
>
Take Care.
Rob!
