[GRASS5] Re: [winGRASS] cygwin and winGRASS status update

[Andreas Lange]

Dear winGRASS friends,

i generally agree that a meeting would be nice.

But i have to dissapoint you that the generic GRASS windows driver would
not solve all the problems installing and running GRASS on cygwin. I
looked what it needs to create the driver and found that i do not know
enough about Windows GUI and cygwin sockets programming to do that. And
i fear that it may be a waste of time, because of the uncertain future
of the GRASS X Driver and Windows beeing sort of a moving target. 

I think that it is very important to maintain a shared code base for all
GRASS "ports", including the cygwin port. Otherwise we would get a
complexity we are not able to handle and fixes to the GRASS CVS would
not be integrated into the cygwin port. 

The GRASS source and tcltkgrass is extremly interwoven with UNIX style
utilities, so that porting only the X Driver would not help using
tcltkgrass on cygwin. Remember that tcltkgrass uses xwininfo, xterm and
other UNIX X Window utilities, which have no equivalent in Windows.

And i have to stress that i had a perfectly running GRASS on cygwin with
the Starnet Demo Server until the update for cygwin broke the X Driver.
As i expect that the Cygwin/XFree86 system will improve further in the
next time, so i want to propose that we first try to isolate the problem
with the X Driver on cywin. 

I already put together some material to assemble and distribute a
cygwin/winGRASS CD ROM, but did not work on this as the system does not
work currently. I want to ask all of you to cooperate with me, as i
invested already a lot of time in the setup documents and user support
etc. I would be glad if i get a small repay for this work. Of course the
bigger proportion of money would go to GRASS development. 

I don't think that a presale of the cd would be a good idea, as i am not
sure if / when the complete cygwin port will be ready. And i think that
we should spend money first on things that generally improve GRASS (map
datum implementation etc.) than on things that only help windows 
GRASS users. But that would not stay true if a sponsor jumps in for the
windows port. 

More on this later ...

cu,

Andreas

Markus Neteler wrote:
> 
> Hi John, hi all interested in winGRASS
> 
> (cc to grass5, gav)
> 
> [Note: the current problem of winGRASS is the lack of a generic
>  GRASS windows driver. As using a Windows-Xserver at time, the installation
>  is pretty complicated. If a generic GRASS windows driver would be available
>  GRASS installation would become a snap]
> 
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 07:31:27AM -0600, John Huddleston wrote:
> [...]
> > Once upon a time, I wrote to Markus about getting a small
> > team together for 3-5 days to hammer out the issues together.
> > I still think this is a good idea.   If there are funds, or if we could
> > get a sponsor for the WinGRASS version, this would help.
> > We could cut a WinGRASS CD, charge $79 (US) and help
> > defray the costs.
> 
> I still like this idea! Even using existing GPL'ed software to
> extract their driver and modify for GRASS might be a way (gnuplot or
> similar).
> 
> Ideas to support a winGRASS developers meeting are:
> 
>  - find a generous sponsor (or more) to fund a GRASS monitor driver for
>    windows
>  - start to presale a WinGRASS CDROM. I am sure that *many* people would
>    purchase such a CDROM, but I am not sure how many could be sold in advance
>    to collect money for a winGRASS developers meeting.
> 
> The German "GRASS Anwender-Vereinigung e.V." (GAV) is a forum to collect
> fundings and to donate to such projects. But at time the GAV is far away
> to sponsor such a meeting.
> 
> Probably there is a company or institution to spend a part of their "ESRI
> tax" or whatever to push this idea?
> 
> Markus Neteler

-- 
Andreas Lange, 65187 Wiesbaden, Germany, Tel. +49 611 807850
Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de - A.C.Lange at GMX.net