The ClearSight demo does implement the use of ethereal as an out of process
COM server, which is what we would want to do anyway. If it is done this
way, only data is marhsalled between processes; and it shouldn't matter if
the server is Unicode or MCBS. I think that that's what WP would plan to do
also if they want to create an adjunct to their products.
After this discussion, I think that's what I have to do in my own "demo"
instead of trying to link the ethereal library statically to our test app.
-----Original Message-----
From: ethereal-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ethereal-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Guy Harris
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 1:06 PM
To: Ethereal development
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Windows Unicode build
jscott wrote:
> I can make changes to filesystem.c, but first wanted to inquire generally
> about building ethereal with MSVC/Unicode.
The answer is, as per my previous message, "we haven't tried it, as far
as I know".
Making it handle Unicode file names on Windows *and* handle file names
correctly on UN*X would involve deciding whether to use UTF-8 byte
strings, or "wide character" strings, on Windows.
We'd then have to worry about Windows OT - Microsoft has "The Microsoft
Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems":
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/dev/mslu_announce.mspx
to let you run Win32 Unicode apps on Windows OT - but I don't know if it
has one of those obnoxious "GPL is evil, burn the GPL" licenses
Microsquish have been slapping on some of their code lately.
We'd also have to, I think, use _wfopen() on Windows to open files with
Unicode pathnames, and the page at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vccore98/HT
ML/_crt_fopen.2c_._wfopen.asp
seems to hint that, when reading files in text mode, we'd have to take
care when reading files that might contain non-ASCII characters.
Coming from a UN*X background, my inclination would be to use UTF-8 as
much as possible on Windows - that's the way Unicode is generally
handled on UN*X systems - and translate between UTF-8 and Unicode wide
characters at the points where Ethereal calls Win32 or MSVC++-library
routines. (That'd mean that the filesystem.c functions would take byte
strings, not wide character strings, as arguments.)
> Right now this is just a research project, to see if it's possible to use
> ethereal dissectors in a WP product. If it is possible, then the lawyers
> will figure out what we need to do if we intend to include ethereal in a
> released product.
The answer is "either GPL the product or make sure that the product runs
'at arm's length' from Ethereal". The ClearSight people originally
linked with Ethereal code and did *NOT* GPL their software - that's not
allowed. They currently have a modified version of Ethereal that runs
as, I think, an out-of-process COM server, and their non-GPLed
application uses COM to control it. ("Out-of-process" is critical - an
in-process server counts as linking with Ethereal, and doing that means
you have to GPL the application that's linking with it.)
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