[Mike Frisch <mfrisch@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Mar 04, 2002 at 10:05:03PM -0800, Chris Waters wrote:
> I didn't mean to create a debate on the merits of different UIs. I am
> certainly not advocating abandoning, or even replacing the existing GUI. I
> strongly agree with the merits of cross platform functionality.

Understood.  I was trying to justify the reason why supporting the
native Windows UI is a good idea.

> Let me try and return to my original question about making a library version
> of Ethereal. I had originally thought that the best approach would be to
> create a set of stub functions which translated all internal data structures
> and APIs into a set of external functions and APIs. This would save any
> program linking with the library from needing to include the large number of
> include files used in the Ethereal code. With some experimentation however I
> found that I can compile all of the Ethereal headers with Borland C++
> Builder directly, so my concern is not really valid (Although needing to
> include such a large number of files is still pretty ugly). I also thought
> some more about the amount of work required in mapping from the internal
> data-structures to the external ones and realized how huge an undertaking it
> is.

I think the better approach would be to separate the working code from
the UI as much as possible and create a thin abstraction layer over the
UI.  As Guy suggested, we should seriously have a look at how they do
this in the AbiWord project.

Of course, if you need Ethereal in a DLL for creating another
application, this won't help you.

Mike.