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Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 15:42:25 -0500
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
From: "Peter J. Farley III" <pjfarley AT banet DOT net>
Subject: Re: Two glitches for autoconf 2.49b
Cc: tim DOT van DOT holder AT pandora DOT be, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
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At 09:09 PM 1/2/01 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
 >> Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 11:50:25 -0500
 >> From: "Peter J. Farley III" <pjfarley AT banet DOT net>
 >>
 >> It would not be hard to change the name to use directories (in 
fact,
 >> that part is trivial), but the name would then have to be parsed to 

 >> find out what new directories to create and to create them before
 >> writing the man file.
 >
 >The real problem with this is that it breaks the standard man
 >directory hierarchy.

Agreed.

 >> In summary, it may well be that there will *never* be an 8.3-safe
 >build
 >> available for perl on DJGPP.  In which case, the "::" ==> "__" 
choice
 >I
 >> made is the simplest solution (though changing it to a single "_"
 >would
 >> probably be accepted without any complaints).
 >
 >I'd still like to know what does the Windows port of Perl do with
 >these names.  Can someone find out?

Well, in the 5.7.0 perl distribution currently under development, the 
"manpage separator" is changed in the file perl/lib/extutils/mm_unix.pm 
to "::" unless the OS is 'dos' (that's my change, becomes "__") or the 
OS is reported as 'uwin', when it becomes just ".".  From the perl 
"hints" file for the 'uwin' OS:

#
# hint file for U/WIN (UNIX for Windows 95/NT)
#
# created for U/WIN version 1.55
# running under Windows NT 4.0 SP 3
# using MSVC++ 5.0 for the compiler
#
# created by Joe Buehler (jbuehler AT hekimian DOT com)
#
# for information about U/WIN see www.gtlinc.com
#

So I would say that it looks like for all other MSWin versions (barring 
replacement scripts I am not aware of), the "::" would still be used, 
resulting in an open error.

 >> Eli, would it be too intrusive to add a "special case" to the man
 >clone
 >> to check for "::" in the requested page name and automagically 
convert
 >
 >> it to "__"?
 >
 >It's not hard.  `man' already does some extra-special hacks to 
support
 >8+3 filesystem seamlessly (did you ask yourself what happens when you
 >type "man install-info" on DOS? wildcard expansion doesn't truncate
 >the name to 8+3, you know, so how does `man' find `install-.1'?..)

Understood.  After a stable version of perl 5.6.1 becomes available, it 
might be a good idea to make that change to the man clone, assuming my 
change makes it into that version.

HTH

---------------------------------------------------------
Peter J. Farley III (pjfarley AT dorsai DOT org OR
                      pjfarley AT banet DOT net)