Re: all xterms

[brian@debian.org (Brian Mays)]

maniek@beer.com (Tomasz Wegrzanowski) wrote:

> admin(A) and user(U) are talking
> U - oh, guru, how could i make programs use fooedit ?
> A - you have to set EDITOR to `fooedit'
> U - thanks, and how could i make programs use barpager ?
> A - you have to set PAGER to `barpager'
> U - thanks, and how could i make programs use quuxterm ?
> A - you have to make dir /bin in your home directory,
>     insert ~/bin at start of your PATH, and then make
>     a symlink to /usr/bin/quuxterm named ~/bin/x-terminal-emulator
> 
> You now see, why i don't like this idea
> It have all signs of being local hack not
> a ready solution

Well, if the system administrator finds this to be a consistent problem
with his users, he always has the option to install his own wrapper
script that will honor an XTERM environment variable.

For what it's worth, most inexperienced users might care which editor he
or she wants to use, but the overwhelming majority will not care about
which pager is the default, much less the X terminal emulator that is
running.  The exception, of course, is for systems on which there are
many users who require a specific X terminal emulator to display special
character sets.  But in those situations, the system administrator is
well advised to make that the default for all users, since in most
cases, all of the users will be need the same xterm replacement.  I
cannot imagine many situations where one would encounter an environment
in which there would be so many ignorant users, each insisting on a
different X terminal emulator.

Brian