On Thursday 07 December 2006 04:46, Matthew Reed wrote: > >>An emulator is a specific type of program that mimics hardware. > >> Windows is not a piece of hardware, ergo Wine Is Not an Emulator. > >> It's merely a clone of the Windows API. > > > > This is probably the best answer you will get that is clear and > > simple. Out of interest the term I use to explain to others the > > concept is that WINE is a compatibility layer between Linux and > > Windows. Does that seem an accurate use of the word? It tends to > > set the right impression in the minds of the people I've explained > > it too. > > There are software emulators, and there are hardware emulators. > According to Wikipedia: > > "A software emulator allows computer programs to run on a platform > (computer architecture and/or operating system) other than the one > for which they were originally written." > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator). > > That is *exactly* what Wine does. Take the name "wine" with a grain of salt. It's a word play and a traditional Unix joke where the dev thinks up a clever pun as the name for the app. Eg: We had more, and a better more is of course less. A better less is naturally most. And what else would you call an improved cat other than do? The wikipedia quote you gave defines what an emulator *does*, not what it *is*, so it's not really a definition of an emulator. If it were, a definition of my car would be "that thing that gets me to work" which explains nothing. An emulator is software or hardware that pretends to be a platform that it is not. Wine doesn't do that, it is an implementation of a spec. The fact that it is implemented on a different platform to what the spec designer had in mind is irrelevant. To further illustrate the point, I have compat-libs installed on this machine so that a third party binary (a database) can run. It was designed for a glibc 2.3 platform and this machine is glibc 2.5. These compat-libs fit your wikiedia definition exactly, but you would never ever call them emulators, right? alan _______________________________________________ wine-users mailing list wine-users@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.winehq.org/mailman/listinfo/wine-users
