[Xastir] Christmas present: Messaging Fixes

[James Ewen]

> That's a known problem.  It's talked about in the 2nd 
> paragraph of the README.win32 file.  Can't you just log in as 
> "james" to compile/run Xastir?

Log in to Windows or Cygwin?

> > How can I change the user name to one that is more 
> compatible with *nix?
> 
> Log in as a different user?

Can I log in under Cygwin as a different user?

> > You've got to be a glutton for punishment to want to run Xastir!
> 
> You're again looking at it from a Windows perspective.

Actually I'm looking at it from a user's perspective. I agree that *nix and
Windows are two diametrically opposed systems. One of the reasons that
Windows is so widely used is the user interface. Just about any task is a
simple mouse click away.

Command line interfaces allow for much more powerful access to programs, but
require a lot more user knowledge. Not only knowledge of the application to
be run, but of the operating system, and all other support programs as well.

The end user is expected to be able to decipher information intended for
people intricately involved with the development of the software.

Sometimes it's hard to see the trees for the forest. A prime example is your
question as to whether I had any errors in make.log. I was able to find
about a dozen items in the 700+ lines of output that *might* have been an
error. I still don't know if they were errors or not.

> It's a very 
> foreign environment for a Unix app to be running on Windows.

I agree here as well. It is amazing that the program can run at all.
However, simply moving to a native OS is not going to change the way the OS
and program work. It will remove a few stumbling blocks, that's it.

> Get a Linux or other Unix box going and you'll see how nice 
> it plays with the OS!

What's going to change? I'll have a *nix compatible user name, and I'll be
able to support a few more libraries.

> There _are_ people out there that have switched to Linux in 
> order to run Xastir, then converted the rest of their 
> computing world to Linux, so we've done a little bit of good 
> in the world.  ;-)

Yup, some people are that fed up with Windows, and have the stamina to work
through the STEEP learning curve. They also probably only run mostly  common
software.

The average computer user's knowledge level is dropping as more and more
people decide that they need to have a computer. The simple point and click
interface provided by Windows is overly complicated for many of them. *nix
is not going to become the standard OS with this crowd.

I've been playing with computers for many years, starting on an old
mainframe running Fortran with punched card input. I've been through the
Apple, Adam, Amiga, and 8088 through Pentium machines running various
flavours of Microsoft operating systems. I used to play with the innards a
lot more than I do now. Now I'm more of an appliance operator. I find Linux
to be a very intimidating and frustrating OS to work with. I guess I'm just
too stupid or dense to be able to figure it out.

I am not willing to change all of my software and OS simply to be able to
run one application. I resisted adoption of the Microsoft OS for many years.
I finally fell victim when the number of applications only available on
Windows became too great. Once Linux has more applications than I can miss
out on, I'll probably switch over. 

James
VE6SRV

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