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Re: A ream of questions


I suspected I would not get my point across, but the questions were more important. 


On Friday, December 27, 2013 9:20 PM, Andrey Repin <anrdaemon@yandex.ru> wrote:
Greetings, Jonathan Martin!

> I've been fooling around with Cygwin for awhile now and I haven't done
> anything overly serious with it but I have spent a serious amount of time
> just thinking about what it could do and fooling around with other tools
> that look like it. I've come up with questions that don't have answers yet,
> though I've had to condense them down to just the questions.


> Q: Why doesn't cygwin use an emacs as its frontend instead of a dosshell?

What is "dosshell"? Whatever it is, Cygwin doesn't use it. It use either
native Windows console or it's own mintty by default.

>>    The DOS shell is the native mintty for windows, even if you use a shell program the buffer is a DOSshell window. Emacs has a primitive Unixy shell that could be used as the terminal for Cygwin, and can broaden its functionality through powershell hacking in Emacs Lisp. It has also already fixed the common path conversion issue. This was one of my favorite questions so I have a few ideas on why this would be better.

> Q: Why don't we work on setting up a full blown tutorial system with a set
> of shell scripts and documentation segregation so that newbies can grok The
> Hacker's Dreaming?

You're very welcome.

>>    I have no idea what this means? What I was getting at is that a simple document and a few scripts could be written that tells new users about the filesystem and a few basic tools while teaching them about compiling with something that isn't likely to break, documentation. This could go on to make the whole process less confusing for new users.

> Q: Why doesn't Cygwin do something similar to Cpan?

And what exactly that supposed to mean?

>>    cpan is the module system for Perl. Its much easier to use than most of the packaging systems I've used that aren't also the cornerstone of a distribution. I had thought it might be possible to use something similar with cygwin so that mirrors would not be the issue they are now.

> Q: Why is "#!>help" so useless? Why doesn't it get fixed to act more like
> the old DOS help?

Explain, what you mean, especially, what you mean by "dos help"?

>>    In windows, and in legacy DOS consoles, "Help" was an interactive help that listed the major commands. In Linux its a printf with accessories. My reference is DOS 5 and newer, and I think its better and part of why linux is less popular.

> Q: I saw a quote from "Cybercities Reader" on a fellow list-subscriber's
> reply and it is now sitting on my desk. What would The Great Hive Mind
> suggest to me for further reading? I'm looking for a list of good books that
> are somewhere I couldn't just browse across them as a given.

...?

>>    I had considered omitting this question anyway, so if you don't understand that is perfectly fine, its a complete non-sequitur.
--
WBR,
Andrey Repin (anrdaemon@yandex.ru) 28.12.2013, <06:01>

Sorry for my terrible english...

>>    Is not terrible.


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