lout for pc?

[basile . starynkevitch]

In the lout mailing list, 

>>>>> "Levy" == LEVY SAM <address@hidden> writes:

    Levy> To all Lout Users, I would like to know if anyone has an
    Levy> msdos or microsoft windows based executable of lout. This
    Levy> coupled with a postscript previewer (ghostscript) and emacs
    Levy> would be an ideal combination for text formating on the pc.

My PC is running Lout but it is not running MessyLoss or Winloze: it
is only running Linux (and installing Lout was trivial on Linux).

I'm not really a MessyLoss expert (I did some DOS programming in
1979!), but I think that:

*** unfortunately, if lout want to be successful, it has to support
MessyLoss!! (but I don't need it).

a) Lout C sources files should be nearly portable as is to
MessyLoss. The only problem lies in filename size limitations pecular
to MsDog: filenames in MessyLoss are restricted to up to 8 (upercase)
letters or digits or a few special chars followed by an extension of
up to 3 letters. Hence .lout is not a valid extension to MessyLoss.

b) hence the C source files should be rather trivial (mostly changing
near line 95 of lout/externs the following lines:)

#define LOUT_VERSION    AsciiToFull("Basser Lout Version 3.03 (February 1995)")
#define CROSS_DB           AsciiToFull("lout")     // "lout"
#define SOURCE_SUFFIX      AsciiToFull(".lout")    // "lou"
#define INDEX_SUFFIX       AsciiToFull(".li")  
#define NEW_INDEX_SUFFIX   AsciiToFull(".lix")
#define DATA_SUFFIX        AsciiToFull(".ld")
#define NEW_DATA_SUFFIX    AsciiToFull("x")
#define HYPH_SUFFIX        AsciiToFull(".lh")
#define HYPH_PACKED_SUFFIX AsciiToFull(".lp")
#define FILTER_IN          AsciiToFull("lout.in")
#define FILTER_OUT         AsciiToFull("lout.out")
#define FILTER_ERR         AsciiToFull("lout.err")
 

c) on some occasions (eg a @Cite in a bibliographical database) lout
creates a .ld.ld file. This can't be handled by dos and perhaps ld.ld
should become a ld2 suffix.

d) probably the most time consuming operation is to adapt all Lout
data files, in particular font files. This is easy (just rename the
font/* files and change the include/fontdefs file) but take some time.

e) I think that even on Messy Loss, Lout should use IsoLatin1 (or just
plain Ascii). I believe that supporting Pc characters is not worth it
(and even recent MsDog software use IsoLatin1 as it charset).

f) don't support fancy things such as localization (ie setlocale and
catopen) on MsDos. Perhaps lout filtering -in @Filter (which don't use
unix filters, just the system(3) functions) could be ported to
MessLoss.

My wish (for others; personnaly I really don't care since i'm not
using MessyLoss) is that next lout (ie 3.03 or at least 3.04 does have
a MessyLoss version). I believe that a beginner student should be able
to do it in less than a week (and perhaps only a day). I have no
motivation for doing this.

Also, porting Lout to non-Unix systems is good for lout "marketing" ie
for lout diffusion. Several people criticize Lout for being to much
Unix centered, and obviously lout was designed without any Unixism.


I don't know anything at all about Apple Mac OS; but perhaps lout
could be ported to MacOS7.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Basile STARYNKEVITCH   ----  Commissariat a l Energie Atomique
DRN/DMT/SERMA * C.E. Saclay bat.470 * 91191 GIF/YVETTE CEDEX * France
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46.65.45.53
email: address@hidden (redirected to address@hidden);  
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N.B. Any opinions expressed here are solely mine, and not of my organization.
N.B. Les opinions exprimees ici me sont personnelles et n engagent pas le CEA.

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