Re: Windows Lilypond...

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

address@hidden writes:

[This is really mailing list stuff, cc'd gmd]

> I agree... A little thing that's bothering me, is that it's impossible to
> do a real step-by-step help. There will always be a newby level
> under.

That may be true, but then it's up to that newbie to let hear of her
problems or difficulties.

> Suppose on them doesn't know how to use even a DOS shell?

Hopefully, she'll learn and add an extra page to the Wiki.  Maybe
she gives up.

> > Also, to get at the `base' (called `root' in unix), you can do:
> 
> That's a question I'd like to ask you : What is the root?

In unix, it's simple.  The root is the very start of the file system.
Unix has only ever one root, but a root may be different physical
disks.  So, you have

   /  # the root
   /bin  # programs needed at startup
   /boot # the kernel etc
   /usr/bin # programs not needed at startup
   /home/jan # Jan's home dir
   /home/jeremie # Jérémie's home dir

often, /usr or /home are different disks or partitions; they can be
`mounted' wherever you want.

> In MS-DOS/Windows, the root is the first directory after the disk (eg:
> //c/) but,

Yes, DOS made the mistake of using a multi-rooted file system.

> with a Lilypond shell, it seems the root is //c/cygwin. Does that
> have anything to do that it was launch from the cygwin directory? Or is a
> preset value in a script file?

This is a bit difficult.  Cygwin is GNU (a unix like) environment.
This means, that everything must be accessible under / (the root).
In very early versions of cygwin, /usr and /bin were simply at

   c:/usr
   c:/bin

etc.  But people didn't like that.  So, Cygwin made it so that when
you're in the cygwin environment (bash, or programs compiled with
cygwin, such as /bin/cp.exe, lilypond.exe), see c:/cygwin as root.

You can see this when you type `mount' at the bash prompt.  You'll see
that / (the root) is mounted c:/cygwin.  Note that the //c prefix will
be removed, this will change to /cygdrive/c/.

> >     http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO.html
> 
> That's a really good link. The Files and Programs could help, but the most
> useful part is the 2. For the Impatient one.
> I'll add it to the WikiWiki page.

That's fine.  Forgot to mention that all these HOWTOs have been
translated into French, of course.

> BTW, I was wondering. Are you sure all the paths definition for every
> program that works with Lilypond are in the *.sh files in the  etc/profile/
> whatever dir (can you give me the precise path?), or is there need for other
> things?

Yes, every PATH and other environment variable setting should be in
/etc/profile.d/*.sh.  But there are also changes in settings in the
/usr/lilypond-1.4.2/wrapper/* scripts, eg
/usr/lilypond-1.4.2/wrapper/tex and /usr/lilypond-1.4.2/wrapper/dvips
(in 1.4.2.jcn3, will be in 1.4.3).  These wrappers do something like

    MFINPUTS=$WINDOWS_MFINPUTS (the MFINPUTS and WINDOWS_MFINPUTS have
                                been set before in the /etc/profile.d/*.sh)
    tex.exe $*

> In the first case, it would quite easy to port it to an MS-DOS batch
> file...

No, this should not be difficult.  But, the /etc/profile.d scripts can
be very powerful (there not yet).  It's easy to make them read from
the registry where python or miktex is installed, and then set PATH or
MFINPUTS.  This may be very hard to do using MS-DOS batch (I don't
know).

> I could even do a sort of wrapper, that loads all the paths,

I don't exactly understand what you mean by this.

> lilyponds, texs and ps2pdfs the file

This is exactly what ly2dvi is for.  ALso, you may have to be very
careful with ps2pdf.  I know of cases where you get a very bad pdf
from a ps.  That would be not good, it would be better if people would
see and print the ps or dvi.  They have ghostview and yap installed
anyway.

> it was specified in, before cleaning up. That
> would be helpful for newbies with no need for advanced functions.
> 
> What do you think?

I was thinking of a system that puts/leaves all intelligence in bash
scripts, and have simple DOS frontends to that scripts.  Smart users
can use bash and use/debug the bash scripts directly, new users can
use the DOS wrappers that do nothing but call the bash ones.

Jan.

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org