[Xastir] xastir & windows

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

On Sat, 5 Apr 2003, Ian Haver wrote:

> Hey call me Selfish

No, that's _my_ name...


> However Xastir is a perfect *nix software, why are we giving Billy Boy 
> Gates something else to bite his teeth into??
> 
> Even the xastir web site lists Windows first.

Being selfish, I want to be able to run my favorite APRS software
when I think it'd be most useful to do so.  Unfortunately it would be
difficult politically and from a practial standpoint to run Linux
during our SAR missions, unless I keep everything maintained for
them.  I don't want to be a single-point-of-failure on a mission, so
I prefer to have something that lots of people know how to use and
maintain.  In this case it happens to be Windows.  Perhaps that'll
change over time.

Due to mostly that reason, and that the Cygwin/Xastir folks are
asking for it as well, I've been adding more support for Cygwin and
soon support for AGWPE.  Blame _me_ for the Windows stuff.


> As a linux user it was nice having something over windows and now we are 
> giving it to them again.

And more users is a bad thing?

If we had a widget set that was compatible with Windows from the
get-go, we probably would have had a native Windows version of Xastir
a long time ago.  The Cygwin thing kind of snuck up on us, and it
actually works fairly well, but a native Windows port would be better
yet.

I don't personally _like_ to run Windows for anything, but have been
doing a bit of it just for the Xastir/Cygwin/AGWPE integration.
Right now I'm developing on Linux and connecting to an AGWPE instance
on a SAR laptop next to me (running Win95) in order to implement and
debug that interface.

I can see uses in EOC's and the like where a Linux user might want
to tap in to a running packet network using AGWPE.  This will allow
them to do so.  It'll also allow Xastir/Cygwin users to use AGWPE
via the same machine or via the network.

More interface options are better.  More map options are better.
More users are better.  Any questions?

Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
  Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"