On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 2:34 PM, David Matthews <David.Matthews at prolingua.co.uk> wrote:
Executables in Windows can be either "windows" or "console" applications depending on the "subsystem" setting in the EXE header. "console" applications are always started with a cmd.exe-style console unless they're already in a console. "windows" applications are expected to create their own GUI. My impression is that "console" applications are regarded as a legacy of DOS and not well supported. That's why I've made "windows" mode the default. Nevertheless there may be cases where someone would like to build "poly" as a console application which is the reason for adding the option.
FWIW, here's my preferences wrt PolyML on windows:
- I appreciate prebuilt binaries, as I often don't have all the tools needed to built things myself on windows.
- I don't care if there's an installer or not as long as the steps needed to install something are clear.
- I have no use of "windows" applications for a language system such as polyml. I expect to run sml interpreters in an emacs buffer using inferior-SML, just like I do on Unix. That's the reason why up to now I only used PolyML rarely, mostly for comparisons against sml/nj (whose prebuilt binary is a console application that I can run from emacs, and hence is a million times more pleasing to use for me, despite being slower than PolyML on most of the programs I care about).
- for people who don't use emacs there would be little difference between a console and a window application, I think. In both cases they would get a basic window with the interpreter prompt and not much more.
Thank you!