Re: tiff-v3.4beta036

[David Smith <david@bcm.tmc.edu>]

On Tue, 29 Apr 1997, Ted S. Garaventa wrote:

> I was just told by Cary Leung that I need the tiff-v3.4beta036 to run
> HylaFAX on solaris-x86. I downloaded it and as usual it needs to be
> compiled to work. Where can I get it in binary form already compiled?
> I am not a programmer and all this software is useless if I cannot get a
> pre-compiled version of all the software.

You don't have to be a programmer to build most software off the net.  
There is usually a configure or install file that steps you through how 
to build and install it.  You just need a C compiler, I reccomend gcc, 
which is avalible in source and binary forms for most platforms, 
including Solaris x86.

Most free UNIX software is distributed in source form.  There are many
reasons for this.  One is most developers don't have access to every type 
and revision of UNIX and so would only be able to provide software on 
only a few platforms.  Another is that paths and libaries would have to 
be hard coded, so you would have to install where the developer wanted, 
and the binaries would either be much larger or you would have to have 
compatable libaries (and I have seen cases where just a patch level, on 
the same hardware and OS rev level has caused programs to crash).

If you can't at least compile basic programs, and you don't even need to 
know any program language to do that, you won't be able to use much of 
the free software avalible.


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David A. Smith                          | Baylor College of Medicine
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