>From: Guido Gonzato
>this is a list of changes I did:
>
> - removed #include <process.h> from all source files; neither
Linux nor
> Djgpp have it
That one's required for VC -- it defines the "exit" function among
other things, if I recall correctly. I guess it should be put in a
preprocessor conditional
> - replaced stricmp (nonstandard) with strcmp
Where I used stricmp, that use was intentional because the text
should not be case sensitive. You will need to provide an equivalent to
stricmp (non case-sensitive comparison).
>
> - replaced gets() (dangerous!) with scanf()
Not sure what you mean by dangerous. Either will puke under certain
circumstances (in fact, on most platforms/compilers I've used, scanf is more
likely to crash in the event of a data type mismatch, for example). In any
case, I think that where this is used I've done sufficient error checking.
>
> - placed (int) typecasts where necessary to please gcc.
That's curious, I had to cast a lot (hundreds) of ints and longs
from the original to please VC ;-)
>I realise that if you used VC++ you had good reasons to, but
<strong
>personal opinion> I strongly believe that a free project under GPL
should
>use free and portable compilers.
Mostly it's what I use every day. I have full up dev studio at work
and at home and see no reason not to use it -- especially since when this
started out I was just going to "tweak a couple of things for myself."
Initially I had no intention of making the changes a public thing. It was
only when I got on this list and noticed people asking for some of the stuff
I'd already done that I decided to make it available to all. If I'd set out
to make an "open source" item I'd certainly have followed the course you
recommend.
This also points up one of the problems with abc2ps variants that is
going to make it difficult to make the source forge thing realistic. No
disrespect to Michael or to others who followed him, but abc2ps and it's
children are a real mess from a design standpoint. Many things are
"spaghettied" (okay, so I like to make up words) throughout the code in such
a way that even a fairly insignificant tweak can leave a huge footprint in
the code.
>If you do decide to stick to VC++, I fear that yet another branch
would
>probably emerge. Or maybe not; all the code is there and the other
abc2ps
>authors could simply cannibalise its parts.
Possibly. It looks like all the changes you made can easily be
handled with preprocessor directives so I'll probably roll the changes into
my source.
>Whatever your decision will be: thank you for your nice job!
You're welcome (blush).
John Atchley
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