Subject: Re: pbmplus and emm386 noems
To: burger AT Papin DOT HRZ DOT Uni-Marburg DOT DE (Christian Burger)
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 1994 12:41:03 -0600 (CDT)
Cc: sasbnb AT unx DOT sas DOT com, djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
From: mcastle AT umr DOT edu (Mike Castle)

Amazingly enough Christian Burger said:
> I have no idea what causes the trouble with the pbmplus binaries
> available from simtel (maybe the hacking of crt0.o ?). Recompiling the

More likely the 1.09 go32 I used.  The hacking to crt0 was
minimal, simply a call to a function that calls setmode().

> sources with djgpp-1.12 solves the problem.
> 
> BTW, I found renaming the executables to overcome DOS' missing symbolic
> links absolutely unsatisfactory. In the case of the pbmplus package,
> giving the name of the desired utility as the 1st argument on the
> command line (e.g. via a batch file of the appropriate name) seems more
> convenient.

I found it unsatisfactory to distribute a several meg package
when it could be packaged in less than 0.5 megs.  Actually,
pbmplus DOES support the name of the program on the command line.
Invoking it as 
ppmmerge tgatoppm.exe input.tga | ppmmerge ppmqvga.exe | ppmmerge
ppmtogif.exe > output.gif


would work.  However I did not know this at the time I ported the
package, and therefore is undocumented.  While perhaps DOSKEY
aliases *might* work (don't know if they work on just the first
command on a line, or any instance of a program invocation on a
line, such as after the pipe symbol), batch files will not work
since they don't allow piping.  4DOS may overcome some of these
problems.

mrc
-- 
Mike Castle .-=NEXUS=-.  Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly
  mcastle AT cs DOT umr DOT edu     and be right all the time, or not work at all
   mcastle AT umr DOT edu       and be right at least twice a day.  -- mrc
    We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan.  -- Watchmen