Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Message-ID: From: Peter Ring To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: RE: name: GNU/Cygwin system Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 16:43:33 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" LSB is not just about binary compatibility; it's also about file hierarchies, configuration mechanisms, and utilities for installation and maintenance. I'd like to bring attention to standardisation of XML resources. Some packages are more or less architecture-independent, e.g., TeX/LaTeX formats and SGML/XML DTDs. Keeping in line with LSB minimizes the porting effort. While there's an established way to handle TeX resources, things are not quite sorted out for SGML/XML. A proposed standard for installation and maintenance of SGML resources [1] didn't make it into the LSB 1.1. The standardisation effort was recently restarted [2]. XML and data- and transaction-oriented applications must now be taken into consideration; the original proposal was strictly SGML-and-document oriented (and focused rather narrowly on DocBook). This has been discussed and is, to the best of my knowledge, acknowledged. Just as XML is not just about documents, it's also rather promiscuous about platforms. Java is very important in this respect, but Cygwin might also play a role here. Cygwin seems to be popular with some of the XML hot-shots when they for some reason or another have to work on Win32 boxes. I'm afraid I can't offer much more -- except that I think we should continue discussing such matters here and on the cygwin-apps list. kind regards Peter Ring [1] http://people.debian.org/~mrj/lsb-sgmlspec_cvs20020308/index.html [2] https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/mailman/listinfo/lsb-xml-sgml -----Original Message----- From: Charles Wilson [mailto:cwilson AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu] Sent: 17. maj 2002 18:49 To: Michael Smith Cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: name: GNU/Cygwin system To tell you the truth, I don't see there being much hope -- or reason for -- the LSB to take cygwin into account. Thanks to various microsoftisms, we're too weird. Non-ELF shared libraries split into "runtime" and "linktime" pieces. Runtime loader works completely differently than ld.so, so library versioning is handled completely differently. Then, we have two different windowing systems..."native" and "X" which must coexist. The best I can see is for cygwin to take what LSB does, and try to follow it as best we can while making allowances for the uniqueness of the platform. We are the best ones to judge where those allowances must be made -- not them. While the linux distributors can (eventually) reach a compromise position that all linux distributions can follow, there is no "compromise" here -- they'd have to put "special case exceptions" in their document specifically for cygwin. But there's no need to uglify the LSB with all that: What is the main purpose of the LSB? Binary interoperability, so that third party software vendors can ship ONE package that is guaranteed to work on every LSB-compliant Linux platform. Doesn't really apply to cygwin...and oh, yeah, how does RMS feel about making life easier for proprietary (possibly closed source) vendors? Would he want the name GNU associated with THAT? -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/