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ASIS News

  Philippe Defert IT/DIS

At the end of March some changes will happen in the configuration of some ASIS applications:

• "gv" replaces "ghostview" as the default front end for "ghostscript", the PostScript viewer. The support for "ghostview" disappeared but "gv" is the natural follow-up of the "ghostview" project. "gv" is already available in ASIS. It has a 3D look and feel and understands "pdf". The configuration of the applications which have to display PostScript files, such as WWW browsers, mail or news readers, will be changed to point to "gv" instead of "ghostview".
• The support for tk 4.2 and tcl 7.6 has been dropped by the tcl/tk developers. The commands "tclsh" and "wish" will be updated to point to tcl/tk 8 (8.0 or 8.1, whichever is the more stable version, to be installed at the end of March). "tclsh" version 7.6 will remain available as "tclsh7.6" and "wish" version 4.2 as "wish4.2". In general, version 8 is backward compatible with 7.6/4.2. Note that "tcl" version 7.3 and "wish" version 3.6 are still in ASIS but without any support at all: it is advised to migrate to version 8.0 as soon as possible.
• The "gcc" project is split into two different development lines:
  1. "gcc", done by the FSF, which will handle very conservative but stable versions,
  2. "egcs", sponsored by Cygnus, which will include more innovative feature for C++ and optimisation.
  "gcc" version 2.8.0 and "egcs" 1.0.1 are more or less at the same level. Unfortunately, "gcc" and "egcs" cannot be both installed with the same prefix. "egcs" contains "g77" but "gcc" 2.8.0 does not have any "g77" cooperating with it. As a consequence, on ASIS "gcc" version is still 2.7.2.3 and "egcs" was installed in the directory /usr/local/egcs/bin. As soon as a version of "g77" is available for "gcc" 2.8.0, the latter will replace the old version of "gcc" in the production area of ASIS. It is difficult to decide if "gcc" should be dropped for "egcs" or not!