David A. Case wrote:
> Is this distinction between "cygwin" and "native" a meaningful
> one? Is it just a matter of path syntax ( /home/green vs.
> C:\home\green )? A matter of personal taste and familiarity?
> Or are there other differences that argue in favor of one form
> of LyX and latex over another?
Please, more knowledgeable people on the list correct me, but let
me add some thoughts on the issue. If I understand cygwin
correctly, than it is more or less one huge pile of code creating
effectively Unix on the top of Windows (path syntax is just that
one percent tip of the iceberg, there is for example whole huge
cygwin32.dll etc.). It makes porting to Windows much more simple,
but the results tend to be much more bulky, slower,
non-compatible with the rest of Windows etc. (probably, not so
bad, but kind of similar to different Windows for Unix
environments -- wine, WABI, or MacWindows).
More knowledgeable critique of cygwin (I am not a programmer, but
just a humble social science PhD student) can be found around
people working on competing projects like MinGW and gnuwin32.
Have a nice day,
Matej
--
Matej Cepl,
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138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of
mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
