And another vast advantage of DOS Windows is that it is a vastly better environment for developing software than unix. The great strength is of course symbolic debugging -- you can single step your compiled code, and see it displayed symbolicly, with the symbols and statements of your source code, whilst unix programmers are usually reduced to picking through core dumps like grave robbers. You can run your program under the debugger and set it so that when an exception condition occurs, bingo you are in the debugger at the line where the exception occurred, and all the variables as they were when the exception occurred, and the rest of windows, the graphical user interface, has been frozen until you examine the situation to your satisfaction. Try that in Unix. You might be able to do a crude and limited equivalent with a text mode program, but with a GUI program you are hosed. This is the basic reason why unix software sucks -- because the tools for writing it suck. And every unix programmer gets to roll his own user interface, which means that every programmer has to figure out how to roll his own user interface and every programmer does it differently. And windows has the *.rc file system for internationalization. A simple and powerful method for putting everything that needs to be translated in one set of files, and nothing that needs to be translated in the other set. Unix has no equivalent. So every company that needs to internationalize its product hand rolls their own ragged equivalent to to windows *.rc and *.res files, but it cannot be the same because they never hand roll the tools for manipulating and using *.rc and *.res files. Windows has power tools for dealing with this problem. Unix does not. And the power tools that unix does possess not only do not adequately address this problem, they are also likely to cut your hands off. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.catalog.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. | jamesd@netcom.com