Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/07/21/07:19:16
On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
> The DJGPP ports of Unix programs, AFAICS, either assume you're working on
> Win95, where you can use '~/.program', or they have been changed to check
> for '~/_program', as well, to make DOS users happy.
The important aspect here is documentation. You message seemed to
imply that these file-name changes aren't documented in the official
docs of the GNU packages. I know only one case where it isn't
documented, and that's GDB. Others have the special DOS init file
name documented in the manual.
> This change from '.program' to '_program' is only necessary because the
> program itself didn't pay attention to MS-DOS, before the DJGPP port was
> made.
I fail to see the fine difference. Why does it matter whether a
problem was fixed as part of the DJGPP porting or by generations
before that? By and large, DJGPP is the only DOS configuration that
is supported by GNU packages nowadays, anyway; all the other DOS
configurations are usually long broken due to lack of support.
> This boils down to the following, somewhat philosophical question: is
> gnuplot compiled by DJGPP a DOS or a Unix version of gnuplot?
It should be both, IMHO. That is, it should maintain its Unix-born
look, feel, and features, but also let the DOS users to use the normal
notation they are used to.
> If it's a
> DOS version, it should behave like other existing DOS versions (-->
> gnuplot.ini). If you prefer to see it as a Unix program, then it should
> look for ~/.gnuplot and, consequently, also for ~/_gnuplot.
I usually prefer that a program looks for the original Unix name, and
if not found, falls back to the DOS surrogate (yes, I know Emacs
doesn't follow that). How is that surrogate called is less important,
but my HO is that _gnuplot is better than gnuplot.ini, unless
gnuplot.ini was used for a long time (breaking back-compatibility with
no good reason is never a good idea).
- Raw text -