FWIW, I did a lot of work a while back translating the Python code to C++.
This is all done on Windows with VS 6.0.  I've got a stand alone parser and
a complete Palm conduit working using this code.  We use it every day in
production where I work.  I started this to have a real conduit that would
work for Palm users who only know how to press the hotsync button.  We
looked at remotely preparing the content and having them sync the pdb, but
it would have been more complex for the users.  Since Windows users are
typically less sophisticated than *nix users, we need to keep things as
simple as possible and as standard as possible.  I think *nix developers
drastically under estimate the simplicity needed for Windows users (but not
developers ;-).

There's a couple of drawbacks to this approach though.  The code base is
using Python so it would be up to me to keep it in sync with the Python
code, not difficult, but not trivial either.  It also adds one more option
to the Plucker project that probably doesn't need to be there.  Also, aside
from the Windows conduit produced (and probably Mac as well), the code
would be useless to the other developers.

I think the work that Bill J (?) is doing on getting a Java version of the
parser built directly from the Python code is GREAT.  This would solve a
lot of problems for me.  I wouldn't have to keep the C++ code in sync and
it could be built directly into a parser.  I think this would become the
parser of choice on Windows.  I'm looking forward to getting the latest
version to start working on a conduit from it.  Once the Java version is
stable, I'll drop my C++ conduit in favor of it.  I think a good conduit
option is the only thing missing from Plucker (well for most Windows users
to really use it easily).

When I ported GKrellM to Windows it took me a long time (probably a week)
to get all the libraries needed and to get a clean build.  A build on
Windows had never been done, so I wasn't surprised that it took me that
long.  I feel the same way about Plucker.  I would expect it to take a long
time to build since (almost?) no one seems to develop on Windows.  I've
stayed away from the viewer code simply because I know it would take some
time to get it running and others seem to be doing a great job of
fixing/updating the code.   I don't blame them for not having the correct
imports and stuff in there if they don't know what to put.  It's up to the
Plucker Windows developers to get it working and tell them what to add.

For example, Bill J (again ?) has made a GTK viewer on *nix.  Since the GTK
libraries have been ported to Windows, I took a shot at compiling it under
MS VS 6.0.  I needed to make a bunch of import/define changes to get it to
compile and run (found a couple bugs too :-)  I have yet to get back to
Bill with the required changes, but I will when I see the next version
released.  This is the way most projects I've been involved with go.  It's
a frustrating build process, but hopefully only one person will have to go
through it.

Bill


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