In article <119### [at] 3-enet>, Daniel Matthews <dan#@3-e.net> 
wrote:

> Oh, I see, but how does some Linux multimedia software such as mplayer uses 
> Windows codecs to decode and encode Video and Audio files?

The processor and machine are the same, so they just have to reimplement 
some stuff to run the code under Linux. It is impossible on Linux 
distributions for machines that can't run Windows, such as LinuxPPC 
(making an emulator for an entirely different architecture is not a 
simple task, and the result will be pretty slow). For POV, you would 
have to write an emulator for every supported platform to emulate every 
other supported platform, and that still doesn't work for plugins that 
use OS specific API's.

And finally, that is Linux software running under Linux. You can't just 
compile it under Mac or Windows. There is no cross-platform way to 
dynamically load plugins like that, each platform would have to 
implement its own version.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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