
Microsoft Announces Converter for Bringing Win32 Apps to the Windows Store - doener
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/desktop-app-converter/
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0x0
It's weird to hear "win32" called "legacy". Last I checked everything from
"wininit.exe" to "svchost.exe" to "winlogon.exe" were win32 (or win64)
applications. Guess the entire base operating system is legacy! :O

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Aleman360
Actually, a lot of what you see in Windows 10 is running on top of UWP.

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maxxxxx
Is that true? They never used Winforms or WPF much themselves. Have they
really started using the frameworks they push their users into?

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Aleman360
Yes. Windows Shell, Xbox, Office, Skype, HoloLens, etc. are all using UWP.

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Longhanks
Windows Explorer is not UWP.

The Office version you get with Office 365 ("Desktop Office"), the one,
businesses use, is certainly not UWP.

Skype UWP is a preview announced a few days ago.

"Are all using UWP"? No. They are in a transition of moving to UWP, but every
serious business application is Win32.

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anonymfus
>Windows Explorer is not UWP.

It's a hybrid: start menu, action centre and some other elements are UWP's
XAML frames now.

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pierrebai
I wish there would be more details. It reminds me of the very old Carbon Dater
from Apple which used to tell you if your MacOS9 program ws compatible with
Carbon on MacOSX and tell you exactly which OS function were gone, which were
deprecated and what the alternatives for them were.

Is Centennial the same approach?

Or is it a wrapper around your app, taking your straight executable and just
failing OS calls that are not supported and forbidden?

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mtgx
Unless I heard it wrong, the title may be a little inaccurate. I believe they
said "to the Windows store or any other store". So you may be able to put UWP
apps on other web stores, too.

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seanalltogether
How does this work with the sandboxing requirements. Last time I tried to
build an app for the ms store i hit an immediate wall with sandboxing and
stopped proceeding with the idea. Are things more lax now?

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mwcampbell
So can we actually start using this yet? I hope it isn't still vapor.

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ridiculous_fish
Let's say I'm building something like an IDE, where I'm not targeting Xbox or
phones. Is UWP appropriate for me? Should I aim to be on the Windows Store?

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bitwize
It depends on the IDE; in particular, whether it competes with Microsoft's own
line of business. Microsoft has historically had non-compete clauses in its
dev tool EULAs. It was an EULA violation, for instance, to use Visual Studio
to write a word processor, database, or spreadsheet program.

I don't know if it still holds for the cuddly "new" Microsoft... but tread
carefully. Windows Store is curated and thus more restrictive than straight
Win32 app development would be.

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thebigshane
Wait... what? Do you have a source for that? I can't find anything in my
searches to confirm that. I _did_ see various EULAs saying you can't
redistribute some bits included with some of the MSDN products (like MSDN
documentation and sample Jet DB files) with your product, if your product is
primarily a general word processor, database, or spreadsheet application. But
nothing like you can't write one of those applications at all.

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bradleyjg
What ever happened to programs? Was there something about that word that
terribly offended people? Too hard to type out? Is 'app' soon going to be
replaced by some kind of pictogram?

Enquiring minds want to know.

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mikeash
You're decades late on this. "App" has been used as a shorthand way to refer
to programs for a loooong time. Random example, Apple had an object oriented
framework called MacApp in 1985.

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khedoros
To me, "app" was just short for "application", and it usually implied
something more than a program. A program was more of an individual binary and
its data files. An application could be a suite of programs; basically, it was
a superset of "program" that could include multiple binaries acting toward a
common purpose.

An "App" (mobile-style) is a new word. It implies (again, to me) a sandboxed
program with a simplified, single-window, full-screen UI.

The same 3 letters (app) have been used my entire life to refer to computer
programs, but the connotation has shifted a _lot_.

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mikeash
It seems pretty constant to me. It has always meant a user-facing program
that's largely self-contained. It's not synonymous with "program," but since
this story is about converting stuff for the Windows Store, I think it's being
used correctly here.

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analognoise
I wish Reactos was a valid replacement. I just want win32 without MS, they can
keep the other garbage.

