Evolution on windoze
No. I’m not talking about windoze evolution (‘innovation’, they keep calling it); which normally takes place in a dark alley, with the swift application of a blackjack to the back of the head of the owner of a truly imaginative software project–by Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or Jim Alchin. That’s nothing new and noteworthy, because we’ve been watching microsoft cheat and steal to get ’software for nothing’ for decades.
Evolution on windoze is actually my reference to one of the most deceptively useful cross-platform porting projects to come down the pike for quite some time. OK. Perhaps useful is going a bit far…’strategic’ might be a better way of putting it.
Ignoring the ‘Monkey Trial’ of infamy, what is Evolution, anyway?
Let me help you out, on that count, by shamelessly stealing the words of others (It’s the way of Open Source and Deming, BTW), with proper attribution, of course:
Evolution is so faithful to the ‘outlook-way’ of doing things, that it has inspired the following reaction from a non-F/L-OSS community member:
(Frankly, in reading through many of Chris’ log entries, I have to wonder about somebody who sees so many problems with windoze; yet, and stays with it anyway, referring to himself: “As a Windows evangelist,…” . Don’t get me wrong, because I’m really not criticizing the kid, you see, it’s just that that kind of behaviour really makes me wonder.)
Enough of the digression about Chris…anyway, Evolution does, indeed, run in the native win32 environment, now; and I wouldn’t have given a rodent’s posterior about it had we not been forced to confront another dose of microsoft proprietary stupidity (referring to binary file formats, not people, this time) this past week.
It seems that the CAliVA High School instructors have suddenly become enamored with the idea of using some sort of calendar/planner functions endemic to the full-version of Outlook 2003. The problem is this: Not everybody has, or uses Outlook 2003; and these instructors are happliy exporting student planners in one of the most restrictive of the “cloaked in proprietary secrecy” file formats ‘.pst‘; which only the full-version of Outlook 2003 can open/import/whatever–to the tune of $329.99 licensing cost per computer.
In view of the fact that microsoft office professional has an intrisic value no greater than $29.95 for the full-retail version, I am not going to throw away $329.99 per computer (for only the standard version), fawning over that illusory goal at the bottom of the microsoft upgrade cycle tarpit: file format compatibility.
If you use Outlook, that’s your problem. Don’t try to pull us into the tarpit with you.
We have StarOffice 8 installed on all of our windoze machines, and use Mozilla Thunderbird, exclusively, for email client tasks. We also have StarOffice 8 installed on all of our Linux machines, and use KMail or Mozilla Thunderbird as email clients (personally, I prefer KMail). We produced microsoft compatible ‘.doc’ files (along with .xls, .rtf, .ppt, etcetera) all last year, and nobody was ever prompted to mention any sort of anomoly with the files we gave them.
However, the nature of education in America is such that, administrators take the path of least resistence, instead of the quickest, most economical path available to them. I anticipate that, even as good as CAliVA has proven to be thus far, we may run into a bit of a roadblock with respect to this ‘.pst’ file format issue; and our students will find themselves excluded unfairly from information being provided to other students.
It’s a matter of economics…and the ‘disparate Impact’ beast threatens to rear its ugly head–once again.
As the “Electronics and Computer Deity”, in our home, it is my task to come-up with a work-around for this situation–just in case Jim Konantz and John Max aren’t receptive to my eloquent and perfectly-reasoned arguments in favor of the implementation of Open Document Standards in public education, and the use of zero-cost and free software.
“Google is your friend”, as Mike Watts used to say; so searches ensued, and I ran across the successful porting of Evolution to the win32 platform–complete with installer.
This page: http://evolution-win32.sourceforge.net/development.php was one of my first stops in my divergent bunny trail, but it wasn’t much help in finding you windoze-types something to install.
Then I happened across this page: http://evolution-win32.sourceforge.net/ , which is an excellent mid-way point–one at which most windoze users would probably get bored and wander away to look at prawns, or some-such.
Now, we have a bit more information located on this page: http://shellter.sourceforge.net/evolution/ , one key point that should not be overlooked in the first paragraph: “…make sure MSVCR71.DLL is in c:\windows\system32 (get it from MS or google it).”
“Now we’re getting somewhere”, as I’m certain more than one windoze user has said by now.
OK. When you follow the trail to download MSVCR71.DLL, you’ll wind your way through several pages that amount to nothing more than ads, with the page goal being very unclear. Nope. I take that back. The page goal is pretty clear, they want to sell you a bunch of unnecessary, overpriced windoze utilities (microsoft calls these third-party, or partner, opportunities–provided you’ve paid the ransom for their SDK, that is). It’s the end goal of the download that is a bit tedious, if you ask me.
I, my friends, have suffered in your stead; and bring to you MSVCR71.DLL to have as your very own–with a simple right-click, save as… action. Just save it to your c:\windows\system32\ directory, and you have that step done. If your browser asks you to overwrite a file of the same name, just cancel the download because you don’t need it.
Now, all you need to do, is visit this SourceForge download page, and pick where you want to download ‘Evolution-for-win32′ from. (The site I used was http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/shellter/Evolution-2.6.2-5.msi, BTW.) The contents of the md5sum file is this: 1782f2c9b61263027471426a396cb0e7 *Evolution-2.6.2-5.msi Those who know what to do with it, will. Those who don’t know what to do with it, will wonder. I’m not getting into it with you right now.
At this point, the essential problem of the proprietary ‘.pst’ files remains a problem. There may be work-around methods to be found via: http://outport.sourceforge.net/ or http://linux.uta.edu/article.php?pid=5, but I haven’t taken the time to dig quite that far, set up an experimental system and test the proposed solutions.
To be uncharacteristically brief, you have Evolution for windoze and we’ll just leave it at, “Let me get back to you on that,” for the time being.
What is so deceptively useful about Evolution, anyway?
Well, it’s deceptive because it so faithfully follows the ‘outlook paradigm’ (such as it is), that it appears to be just as disposable as outlook is–and that’s a high degree of disposability that I’m talking about. Most folks would presume that Evolution is juat as prone to receiving and indiscriminately permitting virus activity as is outlook; but that simply isn’t the case. You have only the usual security risks of running windows, without the value-added set of gaping security holes that outlook provides. If you want those, you have to pay for the real thing, huh?
Wait a minute… oh well, you get the idea, and I’ll mercifully bypass another soap box moment.
It’s useful because it is yet another in the parade of Open Source applications that is slowly breaking the back of the corporation which would maintain an iron-fisted grip on it’s monopoly position–and the power that comes with it–in the market: microsoft.
It is another program, the primary usefulness of which being to wean the windoze crowd from the mindless conformity they love so well; as well as the endless hemorrhage of dollars from their wallets–just to keep up with Johnny Jones, who happens to have far more money than he has brains.
Think of it as digital Zwieback Toast or…
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