yes - i did this and xforms installed with no problems at all. i'm a little 
confused tho as i thought a.out and ELF formats were incompatible...? does 
that mean that the actual fd2ps binary will only work if i have a.out 
compatability compiled into my kernel? i still dont understand why this 
package is shipped with this binary missing...

anyway - many thanks for your help, lyx is compiling away as i type. presume 
it will be a while yet!

GREG

> You could try downloading bxform-088.tgz from the same site and using
> the fd2ps binary from that.  Basically, you unpack bxform-088.tgz in
> some temporary location, cd to the xforms pkgsrc directory, run
> `make extract` there, and then copy the fd2ps binary from the tree
> from bxform-088.tgz to the correct place in the pkgsrc xforms working
> tree.  From there, make should work normally.
> 
> >i'll wait and see if the pkgsrc tree changes...
> 
> Lyx will likely be fixed before xforms is.
> 
> >many thanks for your comments
> 
> You're welcome.
> -- 
> T. M. Pederson <salvage@plethora.net>
> PGP key fingerprint = 48 94 7A 54 59 B6 C0 77  1F F6 94 55 0C 55 51 C4
> "...and so the moral of the story is: Always make backups."
> "But that was the moral last night, and the night before that too!"