Dear Doug

First of all thanks for all the useful info about CYGWIN and Tcl/Tk. I have
obtained the latest CYGWIN release and it may prove helpful.

The executable supplied yesterday seems to work perfectly. It still seems
to be recognised as a DOS console application, since a DOS Window opens
as soon as it is called, but nothing gets written to it. Perhaps this is
what CYGWIN means by making a "Windows" application, but the ones created
by my Salford compiler do not do so. Anyhow, its a minor cosmetic thing
really, but if it were possible to produce an "invisible" executable, that
would look nicer.

The interface is now designed about calling the executable directly, with
just "xtal" as a command line argument. As a result, the environment
variables XTALHOME etc need to be set globally. If WinGX finds an Xtal
executable AND finds that environment variable XTALHOME is set, it adds
a new set of menu items.  Some of these are fixed. "Import SHELX" runs a
standard import from SHELX files, creating a new subdirectory called "xtal"
(if it didn't already exist) and putting all XTAL files there. The other
fixed menu items are one to read the manual from the Web and another as
a toggle to open the listfile after jobs are completed. There is also a
menu item to edit a command file and another to run this command file.

In the WinGX environment, the compid name is always "xtal" and the command
file is "xtal.dat", so that if you are creating a command file the first
command MUST be "compid xtal". The command file is called "command.dat" but
is copied to "xtal.dat" immediately before XTAL is executed.
Other than that its pretty straight forward - the editor Window for the
command file can be left open, so that when the file is saved and the XTAL
job is run, any command changes that need to be made are done easily.

The other menu items depend on the information in a file called "xtalcom.dat"
A copy is sent with this message. and I would appreciate your feedback on
suitable entries in this file. Up to 20 extra menu items may be added.
The contents of this file are pretty obvious. It is  intended to allow the
expert user to create a number of quick short cuts.

Also I would appreciate advice on which files may safely be deleted after
each job, to prevent uneccessary congestion.

Regards Louis