Wine book : Ira Krakow introduction

[Ira Krakow]

Brian, thank you for all your hard work getting the
ball rolling and for your kind words about me.  I
totally agree with you about Prentice Hall's
professionalism and that they "get it".

I want to introduce myself briefly to the group.  I am
an independent Windows (and DOS before that) database
applications developer with nearly 20 years
experience.    I've developed applications in Visual
Basic, Visual C++, Java, Access, PowerBuilder, and
OpenInsight, among others, using back ends such as SQL
Server and Oracle.  My customers have included a wide
variety of businesses, from small 5 person shops to
departments of Fortune 500 companies.   I have also
developed Web-based applications using Active Server
Pages.  In the process, I have had to dig deep into
the advanced features of many of these programs, such
as the Win32 API.

I also am an experienced technical writer and computer
book author.  I wrote the online help for OpenInsight,
which included examples from the Windows API, OLE and
ActiveX controls, ODBC configurations, etc.  A long
time ago (1985) I wrote a computer book (LOTUS 1-2-3
SELF-TAUGHT) which sold 50,000 copies.  I also wrote
the networking chapter of a Java book in 1996.  Go to
amazon.com, type in Ira Krakow, and you'll be able to
buy them!

In the Linux world, I'm a relative newbie.  I've only
seriously gotten into Linux for the past 3 months. 
I'm very excited about Wine/Winelib as the way to
bridge between Windows and Linux applications.  My
goal is to show other Windows developers how to port
their applications over and escape from the clutches
of Microsoft.

Brian has a wealth of knowledge and is a pleasure to
talk with.  I'm thrilled to be teaming up with him and
I'm sure we'll produce a book that will find its
audience quickly.  I've been lurking on the
wine-related groups for 2 months and have been
impressed with the depth of knowledge and willingness
to share that you have.

As I get up to speed in winelib, I'm sure I'll have
questions.  Actually, I have one now - note that
Chapter 12 is a "Case Study ... Porting", with content
to be determined.  Has anyone done a port of some
substantial Windows code to Linux using Winelib?  What
do you think should be covered in this chapter? 
Please  feel free to contact me at
ikrakow_1999 at yahoo.com about this or any related
topic.

Thank you for your attention.  I look forward to
(virtually) meeting all of you.

Sincerely,
Ira Krakow
ikrakow_1999 at yahoo.com