[texworks] Scripting: GnuWin32 and cross-platform scripting with TeXWork's Script TW.system()

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi,

On 2012-01-04 09:51, Paul A Norman wrote:
> Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you and the community, too :).

> To facilitate easier cross-platform scripting using the TeXWork's
> Script system command, I have been looking at using and  recommending
> this release called GnuWin32...
>
>      http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/
>
> Appreciate any comments or suggestions or recommended alternatives please.
> As list traffic is light at present, thought it a good time to post this now.

Yeah, I've stumbled across that project a few times in the past. It
certainly looks very good, providing many tools commonly found on *nix
systems to Windows.
I want to emphasize, though, that this is probably only something for
(very) advanced scripts (though there it can be extremely handy).

I'm not sure what you have in mind, so I won't go into any detail here.
It's just a feeling that for a normal user wanting to, say, "make a
string bold", it would be overkill to have to install several gnu
utilities. But I guess we agree on that point, anyway ;).

It's very interesting to see what the Tw scripting capability is used
for, however. What was originally drafted more as a playground for
things like "make bold", it's now used for a lot more and a lot more
complex scripts.

Cheers,
Stefan