From: mschulter AT DOT value DOT net (M. Schulter) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: groff Date: 15 Mar 1997 03:21:58 GMT Organization: Value Net Internetwork Services Inc. Lines: 55 Message-ID: <5gd4km$amf$1@vnetnews.value.net> References: <5gb1hl$g09 AT freenet-news DOT carleton DOT ca> <332944AB DOT 30DC4A0A AT uiuc DOT edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: value.net To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Steven Engelhardt (sengelha AT uiuc DOT edu) wrote: : Remember, however, that you can either set up an alias or a symbolic : link to each filename to call it whatever you want, so if you really : want, you can alias vi to edit. Doing the same thing wasn't possible in : DOS (without copying the entire file) until the invention of DOSKEY (as : far as I know). At first blush, I could propose using a batch file as a kind of "alias" . This isn't to compare a batch file to a real shell script . : But if you think about it, the names of the files you work with aren't : really that important in the end, what's more important is the : functionality of the utilities you are given. And I will put up the : functionality of the basic set of unix utilities against the basic set : of DOS utilities any day. To keep this on topic, the genius of djgpp and especially the v2gnu ports (from Emacs to less and the fileutils) is precisely that they give DOS users access to a good part of that UNIX power. Before last June I was a total stranger to UNIX. That month I got on the Internet with a shell account, and quickly found ls and man just as natural as dir or help. The next month I downloaded djgpp, and quickly found myself using the same commands in DOS. It's fun to have a consistent user interface: the same commands work on the DOS system I use or on my shell account. I've heard that troff (or groff) is favored by UNIX people because traditionally it's gotten alone more smoothly than TeX with PostScript fonts. As a PostScript programmer, I might guess that code-based typesetting would be right up my alley, and I'd be interested in trying a djgpp version if one comes out. BTW, I'd love to see an "official" djgpp port of TeX/LaTeX with a good implementation of dvips, especially one that can efficiently use Type 1 PostScript fonts. I've seen one version called something like GTEX, but I'm not clear whether it would work on a non-Windows DOS system. There are some nice TeX utilities for Emacs. I'm just picturing editing a TeX file in Emacs and running a batch file to do everything: generate a dvi file, run dvips to go to PostScript (including any embedded EPS illustrations), run a PS interpreter to rasterize to a displayable file, and call a viewer to show the pages on screen. In the meantime, the last two steps work just fine when I write PS graphics in Emacs -- I wonder if dj, eli, and the whole family knew that they were bringing a great 32-bit PostScript programming environment to DOS . I could say that less alone is more than worth the price of admission -- if there _were_ a price of admission . Most respectfully, Margo Schulter mschulter AT value DOT net