On Mon, 21 Jan 2002 maxima-request@www.ma.utexas.edu wrote:
> 6. RE: Windows (Billinghurst, David (CRTS))
> Message: 6
> Subject: RE: [Maxima] Windows
> Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 10:59:54 +0800
> From: CRTS" <David.Billinghurst at riotinto>
> To: <maxima@www.ma.utexas.edu>
>
> Dan Stanger has recently reported some success using:
> - a mingw build of gcl,
> - a build of an mid 2001 version of maxima.
>
> I thing that this is the way to go in the short term, as we know it
> worked once. I agree that it will be easier to package and distribute a
> windows binary that doesn't depend on cygwin. I saw my cygwin build as
> a step in the right direction, rather than the end of the road.
>
> I will try to duplicate Dan's work over the next week or so.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: C Y [mailto:smustudent1 at yahoo]
> Sent: Friday, 18 January 2002 11:47
> To: maxima@www.ma.utexas.edu
> Cc: Billinghurst, David (CRTS); DavidHolmgren@smarttech.com
> Subject: Windows
>
>
> Has anyone tried the new build system in a Windows environment? I know
> some excellent work was done earlier with Cygwin and Clisp - is it
> possible to make a self contained binary from that setup? (I apologize
> for not having been more responsive to the earlier attempts. You guys
> deserve a lot of credit - thanks much.)
When considering approaches to the Win32 environment, tt is useful to
consider the status of a large free software package: TeX and the
related tools (e.g., dvi file viewers that need a graphics). Pdftex
creates additional problems because, while it is a command-line
program, it requires graphics and compression libraries. Although
the "canonical" TeX distribution is unix-based, a number of things
have been done to ensure compatibility with other platforms (OS/2,
Mac OS, Win32, and even DOS).
My experience with TeX on Win32 suggests that Cygwin is a more robust
environment than mingw or even Microsoft tools. Like many academic and
government organizations, our departmental "standard" is Win98, soon to
become WinXP.
In situations where there is a large (graduate) student component in the
user base, there will be individuals who need to run TeX on home systems,
often shared with a spouse, etc.
There have been many TeX distributions and related tools over the
years that used free development tools (emx/rsx, djgpp, mingw, and
cygwin). The two most common TeX distributions, MikTeX and fpTeX, both
rely on MS dll's. MikTeX refuses to install if the system does not have
the required .dll versions. There are many situations where users are
reluctant to install different .dll versions in order to run TeX. They may
have special software that interfaces to an instrument or that is needed
by a spouse on a shared system at home.
I posted an account of our problems finding a TeX distribution that would
run on the full range of Win32 systems. Most of our problems were with
pdftex. Cygwin was recommended by several people. So far my experience
with Cygwin with command-line tools has been good, but I have not looked
into GUI front-ends, and have been using acrobat to view PDF files created
using pdftex.
TeX is a vastly more widely used package than maxima, so there are
multiple distributions that run on different platforms. Maxima needs much
more development work on the core functionality. If it is easy to build
maxima and a suitable lisp under Cygwin, I question the utility of
building versions with other tools that may not support as wide a range of
Win32 platforms as Cygwin does.
Maxima already has a Tk/Tcl front-end. Similar Tk/Tcl apps have
been ported to Win32, but I'm not sure which development tools
were used, or whether it is possible to use IPC with Cygwin and
the available Tk/Tcl distributions.
--
George N. White III <gnw3@acm.org> Bedford Institute of Oceanography