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Re: Proposed package DjVuLibre


On Fri, Apr 11, 2003, sourceforge at docbill dot emailuser dot net wrote:
> > 1) The links above aren't directly to the files, they're SF pages.
> > I know this and you know this, but other people might not know this.
> 
> I could do that.  However, I do not know how often SF changes it's links.
> It might be better to just copy them to my personal website, if you want
> direct links.

I just meant you might mention what they are. But, since potentially there
might be several changes (i.e., several uploads) putting them on a personal 
site might be easier for you and us. 

> > 2) The binaries do not have a ".exe" extension. This is necessary for them
> > to work on Win95/98/ME so unfortunately a showstopper. :(
> > (BTW, have you or anyone tested building on Win9X?) I don't want to get you
> > down, though--I definitely vote for this if the packaging issue is fixed.
> > (After 3 votes you win!)
> 
> Hmm...  That seems to be the way the standard packaging scripts work.  I was
> under the assumption the cygwin version of tar handled adding *.exe
> extensions as necessary.  I can definitely modify the packaging script to
> handle this change. 

Thanks, that would get it well on the way to getting into Cygwin.

> To my knowledge nobody has tried these executables
> under Win9X.  However, there are several volunteers testing the executables.
> I believe they are actually not using Cygwin at all.  They are just
> installing the cygwin.dll and cygjpeg6b.dll's and testing directly under
> Windows.

It depends on what you mean about "using cygwin" since they are if they've
got the DLL. Also, make sure your users know that you can't use more than 
one cygwin1.dll on the system (shared memory addresses, etc.) so if anyone has
Cygwin installed it might screw up their installation with an extra DLL.
(Also, legal disclaimer: IANAL but the GPL says you must give them the source 
along the with DLL, or a written offer good for 3 years.) 
 
> > 3) Does the GUI stuff build if the user has QT installed, or just fail, or
> > horribly? You might see if anyone with kde-cygwin installed can build/use it
> > <http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/> This is probably not necessary just to
> > do a Cygwin release, but it would be nice to know (maybe in README).
> 
> Actually, if both pthreads and qt options are enabled, the build succeeds
> without error.  However, at runtime the executables always fail.  All
> command lines fail in the pthreads library.  Based on the stack dump, it
> seems like libpthread uses uname with a non-threadsafe or invalid pointer...
> I haven't downloaded the pthreads source to trace the problem further.
> Whether the viewer works once that problem is resolved, is an un-answered
> question.  If I do at some point try and get the viewer to work, I'll
> probably make that a separate binary package, so the command line utilities
> can be installed without an X11 dependency.

Whoa. Good fodder for the README!

> > 5) I found this (in tools/*.cpp) interesting:
> 
> The licensing for DjVuLibre has been discussed a great deal.  In fact the
> original statement from LT was so weak, that Richard Stallman said he
> couldn't consider it open source.  However, LT's current statement is
> sufficient to satisfy Richard Stallman, and Desbian.   However, when push
> comes to shove developers always have to be careful about patents.  For
> example the "bzz" program is a great standalone compression program, just as
> good as "bzip2".  But LizardTech doesn't even own the patent, AT&T does.
> And AT&T only grants rights to use the patent when it is in conjunction with
> a DjVu application.   

Bleh. (Also, it's Debian. Named after DEBorah and IAN Murdock.)

> However, there isn't a single "free" binary compressor
> available.  Every binary compression algorithm available has a patent, and
> every patent hold places restrictions.  In the case of "bzip2" and "gzip"
> the restriction is you can only use them in GPL applications.  In the case
> of "bzz" the restriction is it can only be used with a "DjVu" application.

bzip2 is BSD (no advert clause) license IIRC. Let's check... yep
<ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/bzip2/v102/bzip2-1.0.2.tar.gz> 
And there's zlib, though you may not be happy with the compression.
 
> > One last thing: if I read correctly, there is currently no Free version of
> > the encoder that runs on a Microsoft OS, so I definitely support making
> this
> > little bit of Free Software available.
> 
> That is correct.  Either Cygwin or an emulator like VMWARE is needed.  It
> wouldn't take a huge effort to make a Windows version, but most of the
> developers interested in doing so have their hands tied with NDA's.

A good reason for a package. 


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