[DGD] Question: Implementing ANSI

[Trance Junkie]

Hello again, and thanks to everyone who answered my last query.

This might sound a bit backwards after my last question, but I do tend to 
think/do things in strange ways sometimes. Basically, I'm wondering if 
there's a relatively easy way to add ansi colour capabilities to the DGD 
driver. There's a bit of documentation on the SourceForge site on this, and 
some more on Dworkin's DGD FAQ, but again I have stumbled into a couple of 
hurdles.

At first (while assessing DGD for the very first time), I downloaded the 
dgd-1.2p4.zip experimental driver for Win32, which compiled out of the box, 
and I've had very few concerns beyond the relatively small foreach() issue I 
mentioned in my last question.

But, the ansi package pointed to in both the above sources seems to be for 
DGD 1.1, and after unsuccessfully attempting to patch that package into 
1.2p4 (An expected result of what was only an experiment anyway), I 
downloaded dgd-1.1.tar.gz only to find that it's (apparently) useless 
without having Visual C++ installed.

Already I've downloaded and installed 'default' Cygwin plus it's patch 
utility just to patch DGD, and while I am admittedly inexperienced with the 
application, even following the explicit directions supplied at 
http://phantasmal.sourceforge.net/DGD/Config/Customizing.html#ANSIColor , I 
could only manage to make Cygwin produce a series of missing file errors, 
even after triple checking that my commands and directory address were typed 
in perfectly. After this much success, I'm rather leery about installing 
more stuff on this rather small machine that I'll only use the once.

So my question is this: Is anyone aware of a downloadable, relatively 
up-to-date version of DGD (1.2 would be ideal) that supports ansi 
capabilities AND works out of the box for Win32 OS's, and if not, and of 
course if Dworkin is not opposed to the idea, is there anyone willing to 
create one for distribution?

Preferably, I'd rather not have any other added fluff like a mudlib etc., as 
I have consistantly found that my own method and style of coding lpc is 
somewhat different to most of what I have seen out there, and if at all 
possible, I'd rather not have to learn, backtrack through and delete an 
existing driver+mudlib package just to gain that one non-standard driver 
capability that I do want.

I'll happily host it for others to download, indeed I believe there are 
likely to be quite a few others who would like to have such a version of DGD 
readily downloadable so they could start coding their mudlib right away 
without needing to concern themselves with this particular issue. But it 
seems unlikely to me that I would be able to create such a version myself, 
simply due to the fact that I lack experience with the tools required to do 
so.

As an aside, I apologise if these issues have been addressed in the mailing 
list archives, but after downloading them all before posting my last 
question, I found that attempting to read them left my machine in a state of 
frozen shock after Wordpad shat itself while attempting to open them. So you 
see, I did *try* Noah =)

Thanks again,

Shadow