talk-through dll

[Lonnie Cumberland]

Hello All,

I have been reading over the Wine documentation but have not come
across this yet.

I am interested in having a windows DLL that can access some
functions native to Linux.

For instance, possibly an application under wine that allows me to
add a new user to my Linux box.

My guess is that I should be able to write up a windows dll that will
talk to Linux. Is this correct?

If so then where in the Wine docs can I read more about the specifics
of how this can be done?

Thanks in advance,
Lonnie

[Geoff Thorpe]

Hi there,

I've been lurking on the list for some time just watching proceedings but 
this mail interested me more than usual...

On Wednesday 15 May 2002 09:33, Lonnie Cumberland wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I have been reading over the Wine documentation but have not come
> across this yet.
>
> I am interested in having a windows DLL that can access some
> functions native to Linux.
>
> For instance, possibly an application under wine that allows me to
> add a new user to my Linux box.

I don't know enough of the wine internals to answer you with anything better 
than "I'd have thought so". However conceptually I think this touches on 
something very interesting - not entirely unlike VMware's ability to 
"talk-through" to the host-OS (ie. those dinky tools that let the mouse pass 
in and out of the guest OS, etc). It is interesting at another level - for 
years we have all put up with Micro$oft's "extend" policy towards standards, 
APIs, protocols, etc. In this respect Wine also suffers in some sense because 
it will always be chasing the various APIs and behaviours as MS mutates them 
over time.

Won't it be wonderful when some applications will actually work *better* 
under Wine than in native windows? Ie. under native windows, "click here" 
will just open IE or whatever, but under wine with a "talk-through" API, it 
could instead allow the browsing to be hosted either through the 'normal' 
windows API (presumably launching IE) *or* be passed out to a native browser 
of choice on the host system (mozilla, konqueror, whatever).

There's lots of stuff on *nix systems that would enhance a windows 
application beyond what you get in a windows system (expensive add-ons not 
withstanding). One merely needs to think of text-editors (Visual Studio 
inside wine could launch native emacs/vi editors perhaps?), protocol clients 
(ssh, telnet, audio/video streaming, wget), network applications (eg. use the 
user's native mail-client for mailto:*** URLs in win32 apps), etc. Ie. 
handing the full facilities of your host *nix system to the applications you 
run under wine. This truly would make win32 (or the illusion of it provided 
by wine) a better application environment than MS can or will make it.

Nice idea, I hope you have some luck with it.

Cheers,
Geoff

[Francois Gouget]

On Thu, 16 May 2002, Geoff Thorpe wrote:
[...]
> > I am interested in having a windows DLL that can access some
> > functions native to Linux.

[...]

The way to do this would be to be writing a Winelib library. This
library can be used by the rest of the application, be it Winelib or
native Windows, and this library can call both Win32 and Unix APIs. When
in a Winelib library, calling a Unix API is no different from calling it
from any other Unix library.
> Won't it be wonderful when some applications will actually work *better*
> under Wine than in native windows? Ie. under native windows, "click here"
> will just open IE or whatever, but under wine with a "talk-through" API, it
> could instead allow the browsing to be hosted either through the 'normal'
> windows API (presumably launching IE) *or* be passed out to a native browser
> of choice on the host system (mozilla, konqueror, whatever).

You mean something like the fourth screenshot on this page :-)
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/supported_applications.php?id=a-m...
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/images/msword2000_url.gif

--
Francois Gouget         [e-mail]        http://fgouget.free.fr/
                  Hiroshima '45 - Czernobyl '86 - Windows '95

[Lonnie Cumberland]

I think that is a nice method, but why would I want to use Winelib
over a builtin dll which simply makes calls to the Linux kernel?

Cheers,
Lonnie
> On Thu, 16 May 2002, Geoff Thorpe wrote:
> [...]
> > > I am interested in having a windows DLL that can access some
> > > functions native to Linux.
>
> [...]
>
> The way to do this would be to be writing a Winelib library. This
> library can be used by the rest of the application, be it Winelib
> or native Windows, and this library can call both Win32 and Unix
> APIs. When in a Winelib library, calling a Unix API is no
> different from calling it from any other Unix library.
> > Won't it be wonderful when some applications will actually work
> > *better* under Wine than in native windows? Ie. under native
> > windows, "click here" will just open IE or whatever, but under
> > wine with a "talk-through" API, it could instead allow the
> > browsing to be hosted either through the 'normal' windows API
> > (presumably launching IE) *or* be passed out to a native browser
> > of choice on the host system (mozilla, konqueror, whatever).
>
> You mean something like the fourth screenshot on this page :-)

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/supported_applications.php?
id=a-msword
> http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/images/msword2000_url.gif
>
> --
> Francois Gouget         [e-mail]
> http://fgouget.free.fr/
>                  Hiroshima '45 - Czernobyl '86 - Windows '95

[Francois Gouget]

On Wed, 15 May 2002, Lonnie Cumberland wrote:
> I think that is a nice method, but why would I want to use Winelib
> over a builtin dll which simply makes calls to the Linux kernel?

Builtin dlls *are* Winelib dlls.

The only difference is that they are in the same CVS tree as the Wine
source and integrated with the general Wine build system.

--
Francois Gouget         [e-mail]        http://fgouget.free.fr/
                     Linux: the choice of a GNU generation

[Lonnie Cumberland]

Aha!!!

Thanks for the correction. I am still getting used to the lingo and
Wine layout.

Lonnie :)
> On Wed, 15 May 2002, Lonnie Cumberland wrote:
> > I think that is a nice method, but why would I want to use
> > Winelib over a builtin dll which simply makes calls to the Linux
> > kernel?
>
> Builtin dlls *are* Winelib dlls.
>
> The only difference is that they are in the same CVS tree as the
> Wine source and integrated with the general Wine build system.
>
> --
> Francois Gouget         [e-mail]
> http://fgouget.free.fr/
>                     Linux: the choice of a GNU generation