Making builtin OLE32 work right

[Holly Bostick]

Mike McCormack wrote:

> I'm a bit worried that our users are content to use native Windows dlls, 
> which doesn't help achieve Wine's goals.

Well, for what it's worth, I certainly am not (content to use native 
Windows dlls).

Today I just tested an app (see "Pretty Good Solitaire shootout" 
thread), and the reason why it worked on CX and not Wine was DCOM.

So I had to haul butt over to the MS site and get that (I probably have 
it backed up somewhere, but didn't feel like digging through CDs).

Now, from what I hear, it's going to become much more difficult for me 
to do even that in the near future, which stinks, as it was already a 
PITA. Besides which, the documentation on using native dlls is not so 
fabulously detailed and complete that even a user who had said dlls 
readily available (because they dual-boot, for example), is going to 
have a magic carpet ride trying to use them-- they have the dlls for a 
specific version of Windows, which may or may not conform to the dlls 
the program in question actually needs (you have XP dlls, but the 
program wants Win98); with the config file going the way of the dodo, 
there's not such an easy way to change things like winver temporarily, 
and even attempting to consider but a small subset of the possible 
trouble/inconveniences/conflicts that one might encounter brings visions 
of "way too much rtfm/command-line/general geekiness for the 'average' 
user".

If there was a simple, foolproof, well-documented and easily-understood 
method to effectively implement native Windows dlls (or if such dlls 
were implemented invisibly), I might agree with you, because ultimately 
I don't care one way or the other as long as my app works. After all, 
I'm just a user; it's not my job to care about what dlls are being used 
by the backend. So as far as that goes, you're right. I am "content" to 
use native Windows dlls if I can install and utilize them easily to get 
my app working.

But this is not really the case, so if the whole affair of getting my 
app working is going to be a PITA any way you slice it, I'd just as soon 
have it be a Linux-only PITA than a PITA with Microsoft secret sauce.

:-)

Holly