Subject: TeX implementations?
From: [email-masked] (Colin Peters)

28 Oct 1996 23:23:05 -0800
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In-reply-to: Murray Todd Williams's message of Mon, 28 Oct 1996 12:54:21 -0700 <[email-masked]>
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> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 12:54:21 -0700
> From: Murray Todd Williams <[email-masked]>
> 
> You know, this is the weird thing about the Cygnus gnu-win32: many of
> the frequently found GNU packages (emacs, TeX) are already implemented,

I think this is probably because (as you say) the Cygnus stuff is relatively
young, and also because the Cygnus approach is in essence more ambitious.
Making NT look like UNIX is a tough job. Those other packages are mostly,
if not all, more traditional "ports" where the function calls which are
different or not supplied on the new OS are replaced in the source code,
instead of being emulated by a new library. This is far easier than a general
purpose emulation approach (like Cygnus). On the other hand, the Cygnus
approach will make it possible (eventually) to port whole reams of code
without making a single change. Very cool.

> So if I were to write up a FAQ about installation, etc. of mikTeX and
> NTemacs (and most of all, I'd like to put together a good thorough FAQ
> for getting, installing, and running the GCC compiler) where would be
> the best place to have it posted?

There is a FAQ, but not up to date, at Cygnus for the compiler (look at
the project page). I'm sure if you wrote a whole pile of up to date
documentation and sent it to them they would use it.

For a quick start FAQ you can check out my pages at
  http://www.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp/~colin/mingw32.html
Follow the link "Basic Setup and Usage Hints".

However this is really aimed at newbies and users of the Mimimalist GNU-Win32
stuff, so, for example:

> got a file HELLO.EXE created, tried to run the program, and got some
> error about how NT couldn't run the executable.  I hear of demo programs

This problem (sounding like the one where you need to link libstdc++ from
b14 instead of the one with b16) is not documented there. Unfortunately
the mailing list is the only good accurate source of documentation, and
there seem to be problems with the archives.

If you want to write a FAQ, I have web page space to offer, but I cannot
make it available by anon-FTP.

Anyway, later.
Colin.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colin Peters ------------ Saga Univ. Dept. of Information Science, Saga, JAPAN
http://www.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp/~colin/home.html - [email-masked]
コリン ピーターズ - 佐賀大学理工学部情報科学科情報基礎学講座
                    - Current favorite kanji: 晴れ 芝生 -

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