Re: Clarifying the purpose of /etc/papersize?
In article <[🔎] 199606032125.XAA20434@marin.fdn.fr> Yves Arrouye <arrouye@marin.fdn.fr> writes:
> I regularly read messages on the Debian lists about packages that do
> not use /etc/papersize but should. I got the impression that
> /etc/papersize was meant to contain live information about the paper
> size used on a given system, and that programs should read it when
> they need a default paper size (they can of course take papersize from
> the command-line or user-specified configuration file).
> This usage seems logical to me, because it means that the name of
> the default paper to use can be changed when needed in /etc/papersize
> with the net effect of having all programs getting a default value from
> this file taking the change into account.
I assume this interpretation too. When a configuration file changes
the program should use this changed information as soon as possible.
On the other hand this implies some work. This work were even more
useful if this were a standard on other systems too.
Your libpaper seems to be a useful tool, however a whole library for
such a tiny problem might be overkill. (Having files in a standardized
format in /etc/defaults (or so, I didn't read the whole discussion
around this) and writing a library for accessing these were a more
general solution.)
Sven
--
Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de> ; WWW : http://www.sax.de/~sr1/
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