Unix comunication with Windows 8.1

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Sanocon
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Unix comunication with Windows 8.1

Post by Sanocon »

So as of windows 8.1, the built in unix reader has been cut off... In the end this means documents with Mac and Linux encoding will become corupted. I'm already seeing effects due to this since i use blender and the obj and mtl formats and txt files cant be read/converted properly without using notepad++.

so here's an idea, we need a GUI program where the backround tasks start at boot. but the program can be acsessed via an exicutable.

here this program will have 2 options

#! dynamic translate:
this will take the unix code and transmit it to DOS, simaler to Wine.

#2 rewrite the files to become DOS based:
now unix2dos does this, but it uses comand prompt. and trust me, myself and many others are noobs when it comes to the comand prompt. so the software will find and convert file types you choose.

so that's my thoughts. Now notepadd++ does this and i think it's open source, so we could use it as reference.

So you guys think this could be pulled off?
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karlchen
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Re: Unix comunication with Windows 8.1

Post by karlchen »

Hello, Sanocon.

I cannot remember having ever come across a built-in Unix reader on any Windows.
I have never understood why even after 30 years of Windows development the Windows default editor Notepad cannot handle text files created on Unix systems (LF) or Macintosh (CR), but only understands CR-LF as the end of a textline.

Nonetheless, I do not quite understand what your suggestion is aiming at.
Using intelligent editors like Notepad++ on the Windows workstation side is the most common solution to the problem.
What is wrong with this approach?
How is your suggestion related to Linux Mint?

Kind regards,
Karl
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Sanocon
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Re: Unix comunication with Windows 8.1

Post by Sanocon »

karlchen wrote:Hello, Sanocon.

I cannot remember having ever come across a built-in Unix reader on any Windows.
I have never understood why even after 30 years of Windows development the Windows default editor Notepad cannot handle text files created on Unix systems (LF) or Macintosh (CR), but only understands CR-LF as the end of a textline.

Nonetheless, I do not quite understand what your suggestion is aiming at.
Using intelligent editors like Notepad++ on the Windows workstation side is the most common solution to the problem.
What is wrong with this approach?
How is your suggestion related to Linux Mint?

Kind regards,
Karl
to let you know i have both linux mint and Windows 8.1 on my computer. Now the unix reader program was known as Windows Services for UNIX (or SFU for short). It was used since windows 2000, but discontinued at windows 8.1. because of SFU, it was able to read LF encodings, simaler how Wine interprets DOS for Linux.
Now Notepad++ does have a converter, but i'm talking about converting 40+ files to DOS encoding. and i don't know if Notepad++ has a search and convert mode...

Now this isn't just related to linux mint, this is related to linux and windows in general. (although to be honest, i didn't know where to put this sugestion in the forum.) the linux comunity has gone out of their way to be compatible with windows(aka creating Wine, linux able to read the DOS FAT partition, linux programs like lebre office saving in windows format files, UI design to new unix users that is simmaler to windows.) I think it's because Linux is starting to get more noticed and Macintosh is now using the Unix base that Microsoft might be retaliateing from all this by shutting off unix compatability alltogether.
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karlchen
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Re: Unix comunication with Windows 8.1

Post by karlchen »

Hello, Sanocon.

Oh, yes, SFU on Windows. Had totally forgotten about SFU, because we had never used it at work.
Maybe I am a bit slow in this uptake, because personally I come across the situation where I need to transfer text files in Linux format (LF) to my Windows system and open them there in Notepad extremely rarely.
Actually, I solved the problem on the Windows side: All files which would normally be opened by Notepad will be opened by Notepad2, which is what Notepad should have been all the time.

Anyway, for which ever reason you will create a large amount of pure text files on your Linux Mint system, which are meant to be transferred to your Windows system and which must arrive there in Windows text format (CR-LF). And you do not like the idea of fiddling around with the commandlines of dos2unix and unix2dos. By the way, both commands seem to be absent from a default installation and need to be installed manually.

OK. you wish to have a GUI programme as a front end to dos2unix and to unix2dos. Right?
What I do not understand is: Why will a background task be needed which is launched on every reboot?
What is it meant to do?
Detect automatically whenever you create a new text file that this text file will be later on transferred to Windows and needs to converted from LF to CR-LF?
How should any background process be able to recognize what a pure text file be used for later on and on which platform?
So the idea of a background task does not seem to make much sense to me.

Would it not be totally sufficient to add two right click entries to the Nemo file manager context menu which offer "Dos2Unix" and "Unix2Dos"?
If you select "Unix2Dos" e.g. all marked files would be processed by the appropriate unix2dos commandline and converted from Linux text file format (LF) to Windows text file format (CR-LF).
If you select "Dos2Unix" e.g. all marked files would be processed by the appropriate dos2unix commandline and converted from Windows text file format (CR-LF) to Linux text file format (LF).

It will be necessary to compose the needed unix2dos and dos2unix commandlines only once.

Cinnamon file-manager Nemo as well as xfce file-manager Thunar have got a way of creating user defined actions which will be added to the context menu. So no background tasks needed. No big project to create a new GUI. Everything which is needed is already there.

All you have to do is define what actually has got to happen, compose 2 commandlines (or 2 small scripts) and add them to the context menu of your file manager.

Kind regards,
Karl
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Sanocon
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Re: Unix comunication with Windows 8.1

Post by Sanocon »

The main reason why I want a backround program for running unix files is many indie video games and other programs are using .txt based files to help with modding/port to another OS. And if you haven't noticed steam is getting more and more linux ports for games. Even though the file type may not be a .txt it can still be edited with a basic text editor. I don't know but I think blender's exporter exports the files in unix code, since I'm using an obj file for a mod for a space game that is a windows based game, even though the spaceship files are in unix code.
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