Date: Tue, 16 Mar 93 16:10:01 EST
From: DJ Delorie <dj AT ctron DOT com>
To: jshumate AT wrdis01 DOT robins DOT af DOT mil
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: What exactly are shared libraries?

>    I must plead ignorance - what are shared libraries?  Having only worked  
>on a UNIX system that did not use them, I have no idea what the term means.
>Here is your big chance to educate me out of my ignorance.   I assume that
>they are a GOOD THING, but I have no idea why.  

The concept of shared libraries that go32 would use basically reduces
the size of the executables on disk by NOT linking in libc.a until you
actually run the program.  Since all the applications use the same
version of libc.a, you can save a lot of space that way.  The trick is
to not do any actual linking at runtime either, but to just map the
shared image in and have the program just "know" where to call.

>    Since I'm asking questions, I might as well ask another.  I'm not very
>up on graphics and in fact have never used the DJGPP graphics routines.
>Would anyone care to explain to me what VESA graphics are as opposed to
>what I guess you could call "normal" graphics?  What advantages/limitations
>does VESA have?  What does "VESA" stand for, if anything?

VESA is a standard for the video BIOS interface, not the hardware.  If
you have a VESA graphics library, you can use it with any card that
has a VESA bios without changing drivers.

DJ