INSTALLING catdoc 0.90a on MS-DOS system. Surprise, but MS-DOS is native platform for this version of catdoc. In difference of previous version, which was UNIX program, ported to DOS, this one was developed under DOS on nine-years old 286 laptop with Turbo C 2.0. So, catdoc works perfectly well on MS-DOS systems. Documentation can be found in files CATDOC.TXT and CATDOC.PS (both produced by UNIX man command) If you've fetched BINARY DISTRIBUTION, note following: 1. catdoc expect to find its system-wide configuration file in the same directory as executable (and therefore require DOS version 3 or above) If you wish to move charset and special char maps to location other than default (charsets subdirectory of directory, containing executable) you must have this configuration file. 2. Any file name in configuration file can contain %s escape, which would be substituted by directory of executable. 3. All configuration files can use either DOS or UNIX end-of-line convention. 4. Per-user configuration probably wouldn't work. But try to define environment variable HOME and put catdoc.rc file in directory, pointed by it. 5. Catdoc uses DOS country information as specified by COUNTRY statement in your configuration file to determine output encoding. This settings have priority over settings in configuration files (either per-user or system-wide). If it is not what you want, set use_locale = no in the configuration file. If you are insisting on COMPILING catdoc YOURSELF. Please note that catdoc was compiled under DOS using Turbo C 2.01, downloaded from http://community.borland.com/museum. You can get the same one. I've made some attempts to compile catdoc with Watcom C (16-bit), but haven't completely succeeded. If you do, let me know. 1. With 16-bit compiler, use COMPACT memory model If you are using Turbo C make -fmakefile.tc in src directory should be enough. If you have to change anything in the makefile.tc, please let me know. 2. If you are using compilier other than Turbo C /Borland C or Watcom, you should take look on fileutil.c file and possible add couple of #ifdefs here. If your succeed with it, send me a patch (or entire modified file, if you don't know how to make a good unix-like patch). 3. With 32-bit compiler you are on your own. I don't think that small utilities like catdoc should require extender or DPMI host, so I've never tried to build 32-bit version of catdoc for DOS, But if you mix buffer sizes from UNIX version and file-name dependent defines from DOS, you should probably achieve good results. 4. With Turbo C you'll need file getopt.c which comes with Turbo C and unistd.h which is provided in compat directory. Compile getopt.c and add it to cc.lib and put unistd.h in your include directory. Later it might help you to port other unix software. With other compiler you can also make use of getopt.c in compat directory (which is from GNU), but I was unable to make it work with Watcom 10.0 5. It is probably good idea to link wildargs.obj (or wildargv.obj) with catdoc. I didn't do it myself because I use korn shell on machine where I've developed catdoc, so I don't need to include parameter expansion in program.