Re: (OT) Newbie request for Info

["Markus Mauhart" <Markus dot Mauhart at chello dot at>]

Hi Noel ! 


> Warning, rantings of a tired, bored individual below: 

it doesnt sound so, I appreciate that you took the time. 

Important: i didnt wanted to praise windows over unix, instead my point 
was that [cygwin + working windows environment] is an excellent base 
for an experinced windows programmer/user to get started with the 
unix stuff, while for the same person (me) any normal unix/linux 
workstation is a bad starting environment, cause as a beginner neither 
I know what programs to use nor how to configure them so that I can work 
with them .. the default configurations work only for someone who is 
experienced with their usage. 
(while Christopher Faylor wrote that a linux box is the ideal thing to 
getstarted with unix) 

> Markus.Mauhart@chello.at on 2001.02.13 15:04:48 
> >1st I have no working shell (only 25 lines, no cut&past, no easy to 
> >use line buffer like with NT cmd.exe, the keyboard behaves very unexpected 
> >(home, end, esc, ctrl-left/right, F7..)) 
>  
> CygWin provides this. 

I know, and i'm very positive about the current state of a fresh cygwin 
installation. Two years ago for me it was practically unusable, allthough 
i invested much time trying to configure it. 
My statement instead represents my experience with the linux/qnx wokstations 
I had to use/wanted to use during the last years. 

> (although I'd appreciate if someone showed me how to configure these keys). 

in cygwins bash i miss windows-like ESC (clear line), ctrl-left/right 
(prev/next word) .. i'd appreciate the help too. 

> >2nd I have no working text editor & text browser like borlands or MS's 
> >programming IDE 
>  
> I use vim and/or emacs as my editors.  vim is great 'cos it's extremely 
> light-weight -- you'll have to get used to the commands, though.  Emacs provides 
> as much functionality as you may ever want out of it since it's fully 
> configurable through elisp. 

Probably there will come the time when I will switch to some unix editor, but 
only when I am experienced enough to choose and configure it in a way i like 
or to use the default configuration .. meanwhile, while trying to learn and 
use some other parts of the unix environment it would be a wast of time to 
fight against an editor with absolutely surprising behaviour (for me), 
i would have troubles to write even this email. 

> >3rd there simply exist no other file manager comparable with the one an only 
> >NT winfile.exe (dont mix it with the w95/98 version which is crippleware) 
> >which is lightning fast, fully keyboard controllable and allows to easily 
> >browse 2 or 3 directories simultaneously or to switch between many other 
> >directories (given that one knows how to use MDI applications) and is 
> >tightly integrated with the shell (alt-f r cmd enter .. less than 1 s). 
>  
> There are file managers out there but I think most Unix people tend to like the 
> command line better (I'm one of them).  I'll use Windows Explorer now and then 
> for simple stuff. 

On NT or 2000 (not w95/08) you should switch to winfile.exe, i use it together 
with very much cmd.exe, and til now i havent seen any unix user beeing so fast 
and efficient with his shell than me with winfile+cmd .. maybe someday i'll have 
to write my own winfile.exe clone for linux. 

> >4th I have no fast and lean www browser which I need for the documentation 
> >from the web (cygwin & all gnu tools, ..) (IE55 easily can be configured to 
> >the absolutely minimum GUI, you need not be an expert for that, simply 
> >open its options dialog and do it) 
>  
> Although I haven't used it on CygWin, I've used Lynx and it's so light-weight, 
> it uses a text-based GUI.  I've also used Netscape on Sun.  On a PC, I use 
> Netscape or IE, depending. 

long time used netscape 3, never IE4 or netscape4+, but IE5x is usable. 
Using IE5 i can use windows standard key commands for many of my tasks 
which probably are not available on any browser on a linux box. 

> >5th I have no consistent and rich keyboard interface for all applications 
> >like with windows, where typically all commands are available through 
> >menues and the menue entries have their shortcuts which are displayed in 
> >the menue. E.g to minimize a console window or any other window the sequence 
> >'alt-space n' works today, it worked with win31, and it will work in 
> >5 years on windows 7.0. 
>  
> Like I said before, Unix people tend to like command lines.  One reason is that 
> command lines are much more flexible than menu items.  For example, it took 
> Windows years to provide "find . -name "*" -print | xargs grep "some-text" 
> through their GUI.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's still impossible 
> to do something like: 
> find . -type f -print | while read f 
> do 
>     mv $f $f~ 
>     sed 's/before/after/g' $f~ >$f 
>     rm $f~ 
> done 
>  
> to do a global search and replace on a bunch of files.  What about more 
> complicated command lines? 

agreed, there are many things optimally to be done on the commandline 
with the standard unix tools as you've pointed out. 
But for an experienced windows user/programmer who has to learn and 
use gcc & make, it is simply not necessary (and there is no time) to 
learn the whole unix stuff at once. 

> >6th hence for each real task I have to transfer the files and me to/from 
> >my (NT) workstation. 
>  
> >Now there are uncountable advantages of a unix workstation and its toolset too 
> >as you know. But for someone coming from the windows environment the 1st step 
> to 
> >learn about and use some of them IMO now is cygwin, thanks to your and your 
> >friends efforts during the last years. 
> > 
> >Back to what caused me to write this email: I am surprised that you havnt 
> >realized (or dont mind) the fact that cygwin has a great potential to be 
> >the trojan horse of unix & gnu inside the windows world. 
>  
> This is a good point, but read on. 
>  
> >When cygwin additionally would come with easy to use and powerfull standard 
> >applications (mail reader, personal mail server & firewall, editor, 
> filemanager; 
> >easy means controllable through consistent menu's shortcuts, help menue -> open 
> doc 
> >in browser, ..), it would be only a small step to use the same applications 
> >under unix/linux and to forget the windows workstation. 
>  
> Again, Unix people tend to like command lines (some Unix people don't even have 
> a window manager so they're forced to use command lines and text-based GUI's). 
> Windows people tend to assume that a window manager is just part of an operating 
> system. 
>  
> So, if you really want to learn the Unix way of doing things, get used to typing 
> and using man (man man for more info :). 

on my 1st cygwin installation both man and info worked only after days of 
additional web-research, installation and configuration. 
With the current cygwin info doesnt work out of the box. 
And why should i bother to get aquainted with man and info, when now the 
whole information is available on sources.redhat.com and gnu.org for use 
with the web browser, which in most situations is the more effective UI, 
and especially is shurely up to date ? 

> The Trojan Horse you mention above is 
> extremely ineffective since if CygWin added these neat and bloaty gadgets, it 
> would no longer be Unix on Windows and hence would defeat its own purpose. 

Misunderstanding: IMO yet the cygwin actually works as trojan horse without the 
nifty things I mentioned in the last sentence. I thought about them only 
after writing the posting and added it as 'wish list', but i didnt wanted to 
force someone to do it for me. 


Mfg , Markus. 

----------------------
Markus Mauhart
Schottenfeldg. 87-1-21
A-1070 Wien
Austria
email: Markus.Mauhart@chello.at
phone/fax: ++43-1-9.564.126


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