11.0368 TACT NT'd

Humanist Discussion Group (humanist@kcl.ac.uk)
Tue, 28 Oct 1997 18:32:27 +0000 (GMT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 368.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

[1] From: Giuseppe Gigliozzi <gigliozzi@axrma.uniroma1.it> (186)
Subject: Re: Has anyone run TACT on Windows NT?

[2] From: David Dargie <dargie@cltr.uq.edu.au> (32)
Subject: Re: 11.0363 TACT under Windows NT?

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 10:41:47 +0000
From: Giuseppe Gigliozzi <gigliozzi@axrma.uniroma1.it>
Subject: Re: Has anyone run TACT on Windows NT?

John Bradley forwarded to TACT-L:

> I've been attempting to get TACT operate under Windows NT. Something
> about the dougmenu.exe executable launching method seems to conflict
> with NT's control of launching executables. The individual executables
> for Makebase and other features will launch when type from the command
> line. Has anyone got this to work without rewriting the launching
> program?
>
> --Rick Anderson

I think could be useful this message of Michael Beddow on batch file
in TactWeb. The problem seems to be the same: the strange Dos working
with WInNT.

The file tact.bat could probably be a rewritten tact.cmd file in
order to use the syntax: %variable-name%.

Then it is not sure the program runs. I found more useful enter the
command by the command line using the sintax: forcedos makebase
[filename], forcedos usebase [filename], etc.

I also include two messages (I and Beddow again) concerning TactWeb
and Microsoft Internet Information Server 3. The matter seems to be
neither more nor less the same.

Giuseppe Gigliozzi

---------------------------------------------------------

Date sent: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 13:04:21 -0400
Send reply to: "TACT-L: Electronic Forum for TACT Users"
<TACT-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
From: M Beddow <gll6mb@GPS.LEEDS.AC.UK>
To: Multiple recipients of list TACT-L
<TACT-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>

I'm sure everybody who's been using the previous release of TACTWEB
will be delighted over the new features in the latest release (tho
it seems to me to run quite a bit slower -- haven't had time to run
a comparative test).

But as released, it won't work if WebSite is running under Windows
NT. I adapted the earlier version to work under NT, but it involved such a
horrible cludge that I was ashamed to show my handiwork. Fortunately,
the job of adapting the latest version for NT is much simpler. Everything
you need is in the appended text, including the instructions on how to
use it.

Michael Beddow
Department of German
University of Leeds UK http://www.german.leeds.ac.uk/

----------------- cut here ------------------------
rem *** DOTACTQ.CMD ***
rem
rem This Batch file runs TACTWEB software which does most of
rem the work to generate results. ... john bradley
rem
rem (Trivially) modified to work with Windows NT by Michael Beddowrem
rem Allows John Bradley's Tactweb 1.0 system to run under Windows NT
rem Instructions:
rem 1) Install Website and TACTWEB according as in the docs.
rem 2) Copy this file, using the name DOTACTQ.CMD, into Website's
rem cgi-dos directory (where DOTACTQ.BAT should have been installed)
rem 3) Edit /tactweb/doc/tactweb.htm so that the FORM action property
rem refers to dotactq.cmd instead of dotactq.bat
rem
rem You may want to make the same change to tactwebb.htm and twhwqry.htm
rem so the other demos work under NT, too.
rem
rem Construct your own batch files on the model of this one, instead
rem of adapting John's original DOTACTQ.BAT. Remember to give your own
rem batch files the CMD extension, and to make sure you refer to them
rem with that extension in your own query forms.

c:
cd \website\cgi-dos\tactweb
set tactpath=c:\website\cgi-dos
set tactpage=page/page.column

tactweb -w tactweb.wap TDBs\midsumme.tdb

-----------------cut here---------------------------------------------

To: TACT-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA
Subject: TactWeb and WindowsNT
Date sent: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 20:41:51

Dear all,

I need your help:

I am running TactWeb under WinNT Server and using Microsoft Internet
Information Server 3. I receive always this error message: HTTP/1.0
501 Not Supported.

Has anyone tested TactWeb with the same platform hardware and
software? The problem could be in the compatibility 16/32 bit?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

An information I hope could be useful to someone: I tested TactWeb
under Fnord server (Free Software Foundation, Inc. -
http://www.wpi.edu/~zik/fnord). It seems work well enough.

Regards

Giuseppe Gigliozzi

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date sent: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 06:21:39 -0400
Send reply to: "TACT-L: Electronic Forum for TACT Users"
<TACT-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
From: M Beddow <gll6mb@GPS.LEEDS.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: TactWeb and WindowsNT
To: Multiple recipients of list TACT-L
<TACT-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>

>
> Dear all,
>
> I need your help:
>
> I am running TactWeb under WinNT Server and using Microsoft Internet
> Information Server 3. I receive always this error message: HTTP/1.0 501
> Not Supported.

I spent (wasted) many days during the last Summer vacation trying
to get IIS 3 working consistently with *any* DOS CGI program, and
failed completely, despite a lot of help and advice from people in
the relevant newsgroups. I, too, had wanted to use it with TACTWeb
but I couldn't even get it to run a basic "Hello World" CGI script
reliably under the NT CMD.EXE. Even when you get past the oddity of IIS
requiring you to write out all the headers explicitly, scripts that work
for a time suddenly start producing error messages: sometimes stopping and
starting IIS will fix it, at other times you have to reboot NT or even
deinstall and resintall IIS. All these problems (and Microsoft's
indifference to them: they want people to use ISAPI, not CGI, and
certainly not CMD.EXE based CGI) are well documented on USENET. > > Has
anyone tested TactWeb with the same platform hardware and > software?
The problem could be in the compatibility 16/32 bit? >

If the IIS DOS-CGI interface were not seriously broken, the 16/32 bit
issue would indeed be a problem, but an easily fixable one. Soon after
TACTWeb 1.0 was released, I posted amended script files to this list which
allow any non-broken NT server (eg WebSite) to work with TACTWeb.

As distributed, TACTWeb 1.0 assumes you'll be running WebSite under WIN95,
which still uses the 16-bin COMMAND.COM to run DOS CGI scripts. Because a
16-bit program (COMMAND.COM) cannot inherit or pass on standard input or
standard output from or to a 32-bit process (the Webserver) John Bradley's
dotactq.bat etc files have to work via temporary disk files instead of
stdin and stdout. (In brief, the Webserver writes what would normally be
its stdout to a file, then tactweb.exe running inder COMMAND.COM reads
this file and writes its output to another file, which is then passed to
the stdin of the Webserver process). This method can't be used with NT,
because of the way NT handles virtual DOS machines; but it doesn't need to
be used anyway, because NT's CMD.EXE, though it runs DOS programs, is a 32
bit process which can straightforwardly pass stdin and stout to and from
the Webserver. dotactq.bat needs to be changed to dotactq.cmd by the
elementary changes (actually simple deletions) I outlined in my
posting.

But unless you have a lot of time to waste, I'd advise you to give
up trying to get this to work with IIS; and since the problem is
definitely not caused by TACTWeb, there's not much people on this list can
do to help anyone who really has to use IIS to run TACTWeb.

Also, this only applies to TACTWeb 1.0. Version 0.5 *can* be got to
work with NT also, but it's a more complicated business, and not worth is
since 1.0 is superior in every way.

Michael Beddow
Professor of German
University of Leeds http://www.german.leeds.ac.uk/

------------------
Giuseppe Gigliozzi

Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari
Facolta' di Lettere e Filosofia - Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza"
Via Andrea Cesalpino, 12 - 14 - 00185 Roma Italia
Piazza Aldo Moro, 5 - 00185 Roma Italia
Tel. ++.6.44239405 - ++.6.44243482 - ++.6.4991.3183
Fax. ++.6.44240331 - ++.6.4991.3575
e-mail GIGLIOZZI@AXRMA.UNIROMA1.IT - gigliozz@rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it
http://rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it/crilet

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 16:57:24 +1000 (EST)
From: David Dargie <dargie@cltr.uq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: 11.0363 TACT under Windows NT?

> Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 14:59:21 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Rick Anderson <rianders@RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> >
>
>
>I've been attempting to get TACT operate under Windows NT. Something
>about the dougmenu.exe executable launching method seems to conflict with
>NT's control of launching executables. The individual executables for
>Makebase and other features will launch when type from the command line.
>Has anyone got this to work without rewriting the launching program?
>
>--Rick Anderson

Rick,

You don't specify the exact nature of the problem. I had experienced some
problems running TACT under Win95.

I found that my problem was being caused by the %tactpath% statement in
tact.bat. I simply changed the

%tactpath%\dougmenu.exe %tactpath%\tact.mnu %2 %3

to my precise path, which happens to be D:\tact2, giving:

D:\tact2\dougmenu.exe D:\tact2\tact.mnu %2 %3

which made my dougmenu work fine. It's probably because the tactpath
statement doesn't exist in my autoexec.bat file, or is being ignored.

Best of luck

Regards

David Dargie

*****************************************************************
David Dargie
Centre for Language Teaching and Research
University of Queensland
email: dargie@lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au
Phone: +61 7 3365 6917
Home: +61 7 3397 6863
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