Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:05:27 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Joseph N Fiore <fiore AT cs DOT Buffalo DOT EDU>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: man under djgpp
In-Reply-To: <199701270355.WAA06696@armstrong.cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970127085943.7993D-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Joseph N Fiore wrote:

> meta-x man RET  asks for the page I want to view.  I tried 'cat' and got:
> Symbol's function definition is void: start-process

Oops, sorry, I forgot that `M-x man' uses `start-process'.  If you can 
rewrite that part so it calls `call-process', it will work on MSDOS.  You 
can look at lisp/compile.el for an example of a feature that uses 
`start-process' on Unix, but `call-process' on MSDOS.

> couple of weeks.  I imagine DOS can't handle the multi-tasking.  The same
> happens with ispell and shell.  Any idea if running emacs off of djgpp's Bash
> will fix that?

No, the bash port cannot do anything with the lack of multi-processing 
support on MSDOS.  Some packages (such as `compile', and, I believe, 
`man') can be used on MSDOS if you call `call-process' instead of 
`start-process', because they wait for the subprocess to complete anyway; 
others, like `ispell', cannot, because they need a means to stop the 
subprocess in the middle of execution (like when ispell has checked part 
of the buffer) and then restart it from the same point.