Re: Radiance port possible?

["Paul Garceau" <pgarceau at teleport dot com>]

Greetings,

	It's good to see that there are others interested in Radiance on this 
mailing list.

	I too have considered porting Radiance.  Email me directly if you want to 
discuss this further.  It is not only possible now, with Cygwin32-b19, but 
plausible, imho.

	In the meantime, considering that the Unix source version of Radiance is, 
for the most part, GPL protected, I can offer you a few tips.

	For the duration of this post, I will assume that you have already 
downloaded and installed or have in your possesion, Cygwin32-b19.

On 26 Mar 98 at 14:26, the Illustrious Erwin Zierler wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I wondered if anyone on this list is using/has heard about Radiance and
> has an estimation how difficult it would be to port it (or parts of it)
> to WinNT with the Cygnus tools.

	I've considered the possibility...it looks very good considering that 
Cygwin32 creates a Unix (Posix compatible) development environment for any 
Win32 based platform.

	Radiance is huge, in terms of disk space, so be prepared for that. 

	I suggest that you have, at the minimum, a Pentium 90 or better
processor...MMX _not required_. 

	You'll need the Floating-Point co-processor, especially for any
non-Pentium-Class processor.  An Alpha NT would be your best Win32-capable
porting platform for Radiance.

	Radiance requires, at the very least, tcl/tk.

	I think that the tcl/tk libs are included with Cygwin32 (b19).  Would 
someone correct me on this if I am mistaken?  Thanks.

	If you want to generate an X-Windows version of Radiance for NT, then you
will need an X-Server as well as at least one X-Client.

	If you want to use X-Windows as well as tcl/tk (assuming that the tcl/tk 
libs already exist as part of the Cygwin32-b19 distribution):

	For starters, you need to get an X-Server for your Win32 platform as well 
as the associated X-Clients and X-libs.

	A free NT X-Windows Server (may be the only one) is available from:

		http://tnt.microimages.com/www/html/freestuf/mix/

	This one is fine if you're just looking for a functional NT X-Server.  
There are some problems with the Athena Widgets...if you don't know what I 
am talking about, then you don't need to worry about it.  If you know what 
Athena Widgets are, then you will be required to get a Commercial X-Server 
from somewhere.  When I worked with Radiance under Linux, I was using 
X-Windows and tcl/tk (I believe that tcl/tk is required for Unix or Linux 
platforms).

	The Mix X-Server and the available X-Client libs are about all you'll 
need in order to port from Unix to Win32.
	
	Cygwin includes, as part of its distribution (again, I am assuming), an 
NT compatible version of tcl/tk.

	I have heard of no problems with the tcl/tk stuff that is included with
Cygwin32.  

	In order to get X-Windows functionality for Radiance, you'll need to 
either a) download or b) purchase some X-Windows combination package 
specifically designed for the Win32 platforms.

	As far as I know, there is no X-Windows support whatsoever for any of
the later MS-DOS based Windows platforms such as Win3.0, Win3.11 or WFW.

	There are several others, but they are Commercial NT X-Windows Servers 
and seem to reflect, in terms of cost, about the same as any Unix/Linux 
based Commercial X-Window Servers.

Free, pre-compiled, X-Windows Client libs for Cygwin32(b19):

	http://www.parallax.co.uk/~andyp/	(Built under NT-Emacs)
	http://dao.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/grads/win32/X11R6.3/
	
Commercial X-Server:

	http://www.starnet.com/docs/xwin32.html   (2 Hour Demo)

Links to other Commercial X-Servers/Clients:

	http://www.rahul.net/kenton/xsites.html

	Cygnus uses the Posix standard (as in Unix/Linux) and will interpret the 
GCC source.

	Once you've gotten the X-Windows addons, you would then have to download 
all of the Unix-based Radiance source code and build it from scratch.  

Some Caveats:

	There is no Win32 version of Radiance.

	The MS-DOS version requires Athena as I recall, and you would be better
using DJGPP under Win95/98 for such things at this point in time.

	The rest is up to you.  

	Be prepared, any Radiance development you may endeavor to accomplish via
Cygwin32 b19 will only be an "alpha" or possibly a "beta" version of the
Radiance package.  If I had more time and disk-space, I'd be attempting to 
port it myself.

	The people that post to this mailing-list are all good people.

	Hope this helps.

		Peace,

			Paul G.

Information Systems Consultant
NewDawn Productions
http://www.teleport.com/~pgarceau/newdawn/
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