Subject: Re: New newsgroup?

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 04:50:35 -0400

I don't think that this is true.  At least through the lens of Emacs,
    people seem to use one of the toolkits (gnuwin32, uwin, MKS,
    reed-kotler) over the DJGPP tools.

Sorry, I can't understand that sentence.  I cannot tell what
GNU programs you are talking about.  

Do you know of any specific GNU program, other than Emacs,
which is used on Windows NT compiled with anything but DJGPP?
If so, please state the facts you know.

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From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 01:51:31 -0400

I would be glad to have it hosted on the GNU machines (possibly as
    gnu.emacs.w32 or gnu.emacs.ms-w32?).

I don't quite understand--a newsgroup isn't hosted on any particular
machine as far as I know.  What needs a specific host is a mailing list.
I was proposing to move the ntemacs mailing list to the GNU machines.

      Would it be possible to set it
    up to mirror the mailing list?

We can definitely combine a mailing list with a newsgroup.
We have several such pairs now.

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From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 01:49:40 -0400

But we shouldn't
    make the name tied to NT; what about gnu.w32 or gnu.ms-w32?

Would people guess what that means?

How amount gnu.mswindows32.help, and gnu.msdos.help.

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From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 13:46:43 +0300 (IDT)

On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, Richard Stallman wrote:

> My understanding is that most GNU software, when run under Windows NT,
> uses the versions compiled with DJGPP.  My understanding is that Emacs
> is the only major exception.

AFAIK, this is not so.  There are native Windows NT ports of GNU
software as well, both by Cygnus and by other people.

It *is* true, however, that many NT ports are simple console applications
(i.e., they don't have any fancy GUI aspects which are specific to NT),
and therefore many aspects of (and subtle bugs/features due to) their
operation on NT are similar to what the DJGPP users see on MSDOS and
16-bit Windows. 

So, making a news group that is devoted to GNU software on Miscrosoft
platforms might be a useful idea even though the ports are different.
For example, I frequently find myself replying to questions of NT
users on bug-gnu-utils (because almost nobody else does).

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From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 13:50:51 +0300 (IDT)

On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, Geoff Voelker wrote:

> But I may be biased; Eli, do many
> of the users of the DJGPP tools run primarily on NT or Win95?

Not many.  Windows 95 users are more numerous than those on NT, especially
lately.  But my impression is that even Windows 95 users aren't too many,
since many problems related to that platform go unnoticed for months on
end.  (Or maybe people just assume that strange bugs on MS-Windows are a
fact of life and don't report them ;-).

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From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 16:49:51 -0400

Related to this, I believe Geoff was/is investigating whether to mirror
    the ntemacs-users mailing list in a newsgroup, and possibly have a
    digest form of the mailing list.

If we do this, I would like to use the opportunity to rehost it on our
machines, once again to help increase the visibility of the GNU
project.

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From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 02:22:31 -0400

I would not mind moving the mailing list to the GNU machines.  Is
    there a procedure for doing this?

First we need to make some decisions:

* Should we combine this with the more general GNU-on-NT/9X list
which will be joined with the newsgroup gnu.ms-windows32.help?
Or should it remain separate?

* Should the list be maintained here by our list server
or do you want to keep maintaining it at your place?

(I'd prefer to have it maintained here.)