Re: [Plplot-devel] modified drivers allow building a DLL under Windows NT / W2000

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Joachim Wuttke wrote:

> I uploaded modified versions of Win32 drivers.
> Please find them on the sourceforge patch page
> (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=2915&atid=302915).
> They contain essentially the modifications I described
> in several mailings in December.
>
> I presume they are not compatible with archaic (non-NT)
> Windows idiolects; I have not tested.

Let's discuss whether it is important to continue to support win98.
According to http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/zeitgeist-dec02.html
(which I feel is a fairly reliable indication of OS share among the general
public desktop users) we have the following results:

w95  3 per cent
w98 38 per cent
wNT  5 per cent
w2K 21 per cent
wXP 25 per cent

To summarize this, there are a lot of legacy windows users in the general
public that use google! (In comparison, Mac share is 4 per cent and Linux
share is 1 per cent which I think is roughly correct for their respective
desktop share amongst the general public although I think Linux *business*
desktop use is somewhat higher.)

Now our users (mostly scientists, I presume) are not ordinary general public
users, and presumably their Linux and newer windows platform shares are much
higher than in this survey. Nevertheless, I think it still may be important
to support w98.  Olof, if you agree will you please test these changes for
that platform and any newer windows platform that you have access to?  On
the other hand if you decide the cutoff should be wNT as the oldest windows
platform to support that is fine with me as well.  But the important thing
is to test on all windows platforms that you want to support.

Once you are happy with the changes to your driver, please send me a patch
in the form we are most familiar with and I will make the commit (hopefully
before the Saturday release).

>
> Alan: I am sorry for not submitting this patch earlier;
> now it is certainly too late for including it in 5.2.

No problem.  I will include it if Olof has a chance to evaluate it in time
and approves of it.

>
> Olof: since none of us has time to support splitted
> versions for pre-NT and NT, I would propose to
> formally freeze generic Windows support after 5.2,
> and to concentrate on NT in further releases.

I will let you guys decide that between you, but please remember that the
above numbers are about the only solid ones we have on market share and any
discussions of how much lower the w98 share is for scientific users is
pretty much speculation.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

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Linux-powered Science
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