Re: file management with XyDos and DOS & UNIX

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Mimi Gauthier LeBien wrote:

> Okay - I have an off topic query... The company I work for uses
> XyWrite DOS for all documents. They produce hundreds of documents
> daily or weekly (in the transcription department). The rest of the
> office is run on a UNIX or MDX system. Might anyone out there have
> any ideas as far as getting DOS and UNIX to speak to each other so
> that file management could be much more, what can I say,
> manageable? Is there a way to do this without bringing in Windows
> monster? I would even be interested in looking at a file management
> system that would be on the internet. Somet type of system that
> could keep track of documents - when they are started, when they are
> finished, who did the document, where they are at any time,
> etc....that type of thing. I would appreciate any feedback.
>
>
> This is not really my area of knowledge -- someone like Robert would
> likely have a much better command of the subject -- but I'll take a
> shot at it anyway. As I understand it, the various flavors of UNIX
> are, in their native state, rather arcane and technical, not much
> like other OSes we tend to be familiar with. For this reason,
> different desktop Shells have been developed over the years, to make
> basic tasks more accessible to ordinary users. KDE is one of the
> better known of these. I'm reasonably sure there must be some
> decent VDM (DOSbox) options now for Unix / Linux. Almost certainly
> some decent file managers too. (There are apparently also some
> means for running Win-32 app.s under Unix, though the details of
> this are unknown to me. Certainly there are some different
> emulation layers out there. Just this morning, I received a URL for
> a new one from Germany, which is expressly for running OS/2
> emulation under Unix, thereby giving access not only to native OS/2
> app.s, but also to the DOS and 16-bit Win app.s that OS/2 has always
> run very well). If all you needed was good, basic file management,
> I expect it would be possible to get ZTree running under Unix.
> However, it sounds like you need audit trails and other features
> characteristic of full-blown document management and archiving.
> There have been systems for that (enterprise level, and no doubt
> expensive; Xerox offered one), but I would expect them to be Win-32
> based.
>
> Jordan