Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!think!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!princeton!mind!romero
From: romero@mind.UUCP (Antonio Romero)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: unix like utilities for dos
Message-ID: <1743@mind.UUCP>
Date: 5 Feb 88 06:48:49 GMT
References: <10422@mimsy.UUCP> <194@tijc02.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University
Lines: 38
Summary: Pros and Cons of MKS toolkit

In article <194@tijc02.UUCP>, rdo031@tijc02.UUCP (Rick Odle           ) writes:
> in article <10422@mimsy.UUCP>, dgw@mimsy.UUCP (Daniel Winkowski) says:
> > One such example package is the MKS toolkit from Mortice Kern Systems. Does
> > anyone have experience with this package? better ones? 
> > Daniel G. Winkowski	(301) 688-5288
> 
> MKS is great. We use  the many of the routines every day.  The ksh that
> is included is excellent.  
> The other really great tool in the kit is their implementation
> of vi, the most thorough and compatable look-alike that I've seen.

A few comments here:

	1) I'd like to praise most highly their implementation of awk.  NICE.
	Saved me god knows how much time already...

	2) The shell is most welcome, but getting it to work on Novell
	is kind of a neat trick.  In fact, a number of the utilities
	behave really oddly on Novell networks-- ctags, pack, ls, some others.
	I haven't tested exhaustively, though.  If anyone out there has had
	trouble w/ Novell and their stuff, let them know-- they seem eager to 
	help out if they can.

	3) Their VI seems to crash from time to time at the bottom of a file.
	Also, it includes a very unusual feature which looks a lot like
	Berkeley ^Z job control for suspending vi jobs.  This is normally
	wonderful but on occasion when you restart a job the buffer has been
	garbaged and VI warns you to save the buffer somewhere, exit the
	program immediately, panic, run away, etc.

On the whole, though, just about everything works really well-- most 
trouble I've had has been somehow related to running on Novell networks.
I've also dealt with their technical support people both by e-mail and
by phone, and found the company very pleasant, knowledgable, etc...  

Now if only their implementation of RCS is as good as the rest of their
stuff...

Antonio Romero       romero@mind.princeton.edu