Re: problem with auctex and preview-latex under w9x
Fabrice Popineau <Fabrice.Popineau(a)supelec.fr> writes:
AUC-TeX is running external processes using "command.com
/c" or
"cmd.exe /c" whatever the SHELL env. var is set to. But under w9x,
command.com has a command line of limited length : 128 chars, which
prevents preview-latex to run under w98 for example. If those
programs were launched by themselves rather than by the command
interpretor, the problem would vanish.
I'm not sure this problem is specific to AUC-TeX, so I cc'ed
the xemacs
beta list.
I wonder if we should bother at all about these old (and not
supported anymore) windows version,
Windows98 is far from being "not supported anymore": I think it is
used rather often still and almost everything you can buy WRT 3rd
party Windows software will run on it.
but on the other hand, I see no point in running those programs
through a command interpretor: why not running them directly ?
Convenience. Configuring a single string together from pieces is
more handy than having to cobble separate arguments into one
configurable data structure, and of course it allows you shell
wizardry such as pipes, output redirections, wildcard expansions and
so on.
In short: doing it differently might in some instances mean more
work. With regard to preview-latex: maybe one could cook up a scheme
where most of the work was redirected into an external file.
I was not aware of the 128 character limitation: does Windows 98 not
contain some command interpreter without such a limitation?
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum