Hans wrote:
Just wondering: why are users using unix shells on windows for running tex? does it have advantages?
Or is the availability of unix commands the main reason?
In no particular order: The Unix utilities, richer scripting language, compatibility with existing Unix systems one might need to deal with. Familiarity for those of us who have spent many more years working with Unix than Windows. If you need/want a GUI interface, Windows is great and that's where the applications are, for the most part. If you need/want a command-line environment, Unix is much more capable and powerful than the DOS world of the Windows command line. Something like UWIN or Cygwin allows one to have both. I have no familiarity at all with Macs since using the original Mac Plus to publish a newsletter in the late 1980's so I'm not slighting/disparaging Macs in any way. I won't comment on what I don't know about. [Bill Meahan]