From: Adam Flinton 

Rich wrote:
>    It sounds like you are fixated on the packaging of applications (e.g.
> .EXE vs. .class).  I have plenty of examples of components that do not
> bind directly to any Win32 APIs.  Your own example is easily expressed
> in portable ANSI C
>
>         system(CommandString)
>

Given people (outside of opensource projects) only ever get to see the
compiled code then if compiled for windows then it requires windows. I'm
sure you can write portable C, C++ etc but then once spat out by the
compiler it has verious expectations which only a given OS (& usually
only on a given cpu arch)can provide.

Whereas I can give you a jar & not really know or care what OS or cpu
arch you have.

>    I'm sure this isn't just because you are employed by sun.  I'm still
> a bit surprised that you are now claiming that portable code is
> otherwise not possible.
>
I'm not employed by Sun. Portable code is possible but then also dependant
upon the portability of the libs should you choose to use libs.

Adam

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