Re: Windows problems

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm getting more and more convinced that using a 
> cygwin shell as the Lilypond shell causes more
> problems as it solves. 

Maybe so.  As far as I'm concerned, the only problem that it solves
is: providing binaries for windows that more or less work.  It would
be nice if somebody would provide, test and maintain command.com and
cmd.exe shells; that somebody is not going to be me.

> Some examples:
> 
> - It seems we need wrappers for more or less any
>   program to convert the file paths back and forth.
>   For example, yap was unable to make feta*.pk
>   files, since $MFINPUTS was set to the cygwin
>   path, not the windows path. 
>   (MFINPUTS="$WINDOWS_MFINPUTS" fixed the problem)

Yes, dvips had that problem too.  -> we need a similar wrapper for
yap; I'll add it.

Sidenote: I do find this ugly too, but I expect cygwin to include a
(unix compatible) python, teTeX (with xdvi as an option) and ghostview
too, within (half) a year or so.

> - None of the Lilypond programs is able to handle
>   files specified using an absolute path. Example:
> 
> $ ly2dvi /usr/lilypond/input/test/manual-clef.ly
> 
> Running LilyPond...
> GNU LilyPond 1.4.2
> warning: can't find file: `/cygdrive/c/usr/lilypond/input/test/manual-clef
> warning: no lilypond output found for \usr\lilypond\input\test\manual-clef

Ah, that's a bug somewhere.  But this has litte todo with bash shell, I
guess?
 
> - There's no information in the current documentation on 
>   how to translate between Cygwin paths and Windows paths;
>   how can a Windows user now where to place the .ly files.

man cygpath?

Jan.

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