Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 10:47:46 +0200
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Sender: halo1 AT zahav DOT net DOT il
To: "Wojciech Galazka" <wojciech DOT galazka AT polkomtel DOT com DOT pl>
Message-Id: <9791-Tue06Feb2001104746+0200-eliz@is.elta.co.il>
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CC: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <95ngpf$bk9$1@pippin.nask.waw.pl>
	(wojciech DOT galazka AT polkomtel DOT com DOT pl)
Subject: Re: Ending development of libsocket
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> From: "Wojciech Galazka" <wojciech DOT galazka AT polkomtel DOT com DOT pl>
> Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
> Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 01:02:53 +0100
> 
> I'd like to hear how libsocket users would like this library to be targeted
> at? Which operating system
> * Windows NT DOS-box - Cygwin is perhaps a better approach?
> * Windows 9x/ME - ?
> * plain DOS ?

I'd say that it needs to support Windows 9X and ME as its primary
target.  Plain DOS already has a solution, and I'm guiessing that
making libsocket work on NT and W2K is an entirely different ball
game.

> Dave took the top-down approach, that is with wsock.vxd he got TCP and UDP
> protocols and tried to go down to IP which is almost impossible under
> Windows as most of the stack inrternals are undocumented
> I'd opt for quite the opposite direction

From the applications' side, a socket library without TCP is almost
useless, IMHO.  What is needed is a library that can be linked into
applications such as CVS, ftp clients, smtp clients, etc.  In other
words, we need a means to build applications that implement
higher-level protocols on top of TCP/IP.  This will allow to port lots
of applications that currently cannot be ported, or have parts of
their functionality disabled in the DJGPP ports.

Here's only one simple example.  Emacs includes built-in network-aware
features for remote file access, email, news groups, etc.  I have set
up the DJGPP port of Emacs to serve as my mail reader (see the headers
of this message), but for that I needed to solve two problems: how to
fetch mail from my server, and how to send mail from Emacs.

I solved the first problem by simply copying the mailbox file from the
Unix host where it is stored, but this solution won't work for people
whose servers don't allow file-level access to the mailbox.  Emacs
comes with helper applications that can fetch mail by a variety of
protocols, but they don't work in the DJGPP port because libsocket is
missing.

I solved the second problem (sendng mail) by using a Windows
command-line mailer (a public domain program called Blat, see
http://www.blat.net) which I invoke from Emacs in a manner similar to
how sendmail is invoked on Unix.  However, Blat has a few annoying
bugs and misfeatures, which I cannot fix because that requires a
Windows compiler.  WIBNI I could simply compile a command-line mailer
(either Blat or my own) with DJGPP and be done?