GNUstep on windows

[Christopher Armstrong]

I finally finished first year of uni, had about a week to play around
with GNUstep, particularly on Windows.

First, I've rewritten some GDI+ backend code, complete with the
autoconfigure magic (no autodetection of gdiplus, but anyway) and
separated source files. It mostly can replace the GDI code, but I am yet
to rewrite the font handling and DPSimage operator using GDI+. I'm also
to properly test the clipping code (it seems to work, but it doesn't
work with images and fonts at the moment, due to the separation between
GDI and GDI+).

For those interested, some links are:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/back-gdiplusmods-20051201.tar.bz2
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/gdiplus-wrappers-20051201.tar.bz2

Install gdipluswrappers (do a make distclean as I think the sources are
dirty) before installing the modified backend. Make sure you also get a
copy of the GDI+ redistributable from Microsoft (aka gdiplus.dll) if
you're running Win2k, even if you find it in your system32 directory
(mine was corrupt when I found it, in which case I suggest you put a
copy in the local directory. I believe the one in system32 could be a
placeholder i.e. replace at your own risk). I'd provide a diff, but I'm
not sure how to get it to include new files. Comments welcome.

Recompiling GNUstep cvs under windows, I decided to try including
libxml2. It seems this thing will compile under mingw (at least on the
system I tested it on), but it has linking errors, which are thankfully,
very fixable. libiconv2 (depended on by libxml2) needs to have it's
import libraries regenerated from the dll, but with the -l switch. It
tries to link against the old @xx symbols. I think it's something like

dlltool -l libiconv.lib -C -A --export-all-symbols ../bin/libiconv-2.dll

should do the trick. I also ended up removing all the old libiconv
import libraries (.a .la .lib) to get this. I don't know if it works,
but running some of it's unit tests (libxml2) seems to suggest it's
alright.

I also started writing some guides to using GNUstep. What I've written
so far can be found at:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/objc.pdf
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smokey27/appkit.pdf

Tell me what you think, or if you'd like to make some
amendments/suggestions/contributions. They're in docbook format, if
anyone is interested in playing around with them (email me).

Cheers
Chris

<carmstrong AT fastmail Dot com Dot au>