Why is wine "not an emulator"?

Why is wine "not an emulator"? Isn't the difference between Windows apps and Linux apps just libraries asked by applications running? (see previous question) How is possible then to make Windows applications running on a Linux system by software which is "not an emulator"!
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 227

Total answers/comments: 2

Comments display order:

Guest [Entry]

"From here (archived version, because that Wiki page is currently missing)

Wine's not that kind of emulator
When users think of emulators, they
think of programs like Dosbox or
zsnes. These applications run as
virtual machines and are slow, having
to emulate each processor instruction.
Wine does not do any CPU emulation -
hence the name ""Wine Is Not an
Emulator.""
Some people argue that since Wine
introduces an extra layer above the
system a Windows application will run
slowly. While technically true, Wine
is no different from any other
software library in this regard; even
newer versions of Windows must load
extra resources to support older
applications.
Importantly, the combination of Wine
and Unix can sometimes be faster than
Windows itself. This is especially
true when the system has good drivers
and the application isn't exposing any
Performance Related Bugs."

Guest [Entry]

Wine is not emulating Windows, but rather is the (or wrapper for ) win32 API for non-windows OS.