From: geno AT nevada DOT edu (EuGene epetai-Tramaglino)
Reply-To: geno AT nevada DOT edu (EuGene epetai-Tramaglino)
Organization: House Tramaglino
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Line terms; UNIX v. DOS; opinions wanted (was: Info port...)
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 10:14:50 -0800
Sender: geno AT nevada DOT edu

Since this is a subject of particular passion with me, I want to weigh
in on the line terminators issue. I'm going to ramble a little. :-)

First, I believe it's a lot easier to change your editor than to change
the info file formats or the info software. To show how easy it can be,
I've included below the few lines of MicroEMACS code I needed to set
things right. (Sorry about the style. I try to study occasionally. :-) )

Second, I think if we are going to change, we ought to make DOS more
UNIX-like, rather than patching UNIX ports to handle DOS. I started in
the DOS world in 1985, but discovered UNIX two years later. I found that
DOS was a brain-dead cousin to UNIX with many painful cosmetic changes
and the ability to do less. (To this day, I can't figure out why DOS
would have changed a pre-existing option character - and directory
character / to / and \ respectively. For that matter, I'm not sure why
MicroEMACS uses *slightly* different commands than real EMACS, etc.)

On my box at home, I have my disk laid out /usr, /users, etc. (I believe
/home is now standard, but I laid this out after the university system I
logged into regularly in 1987, and it was a VAX of some sort.) I have
most of the GNUish utilities installed, and I use cp instead of copy, et
cetera. I don't use DOS line terminators, except for files that choke
without them. I run the GUNish sh port on startup. (I have an old
version of this: Can someone tell me where the most recent GNUish files
are?)

You get the idea. IMO, it's smarter to move toward UNIX, and I've done
that as much as I find practical. (The major reason I haven't tried
installing linux is that I don't have a tape drive, for instance.) My
386 is walking (cycling?) proof that you can get fairly close with
little effort.

I'm assuming that anyone on this list must like at least some UNIXy
features, and that I'm not talking to an unsympathetic audience. I most
definitely do not want to see DJ's compiler or any other ports go DOSsy
(Mmmmoooo! :-) ), except as absolutely needed to get them on our DOS
boxes. I'd like to hear what the listmembers actually think.

Respectfully,
Geno

------------------------------- cut here -------------------------------
store-procedure set-lterm
	set $lterm &chr 10

	set %g_dot &sin $cfname "."
	!if &equ %g_dot 0
		set %g_ext ""
	!else
		set %g_ext &right $cfname &sub &len $cfname %g_dot
	!endif

	!if &seq %g_ext "bat"
		set $lterm &cat &chr 13 &chr 10
	!endif

	!if &seq $cbufname "config.sys"
		set $lterm &cat &chr 13 &chr 10
	!endif

	!if &seq $cbufname "mskermit.ini"
		set $lterm &cat &chr 13 &chr 10
	!endif

	!if &seq $cbufname "kermrc"
		set $lterm &cat &chr 13 &chr 10
	!endif
!endm
set $writehook set-lterm
------------------------------- cut here -------------------------------

--
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