Re: all xterms

[Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@beer.com>]

On Mon, Nov 01, 1999 at 11:06:36AM -0500, Brian Mays wrote:
> maniek@beer.com (Tomasz Wegrzanowski) wrote:
> 
> > You don't see the reason why I want sensible-xterm.  We have
> > sensible-editor and sensible-pager NOT BECAUSE it is easier
> > to write `sensible-editor' than `joe',`zed',`whatever' nor
> > `sensible-pager' because it is easier to write `sensible-pager'
> > than `more',`less',`whatever', BUT BECAUSE they are called by
> > other programs.  And the same about xterms. I do not want to write
> > `sensible-xterm' on bash, but I want other programs to run my
> > favorite xterm WITHOUT reconfiguring EACH ONE program, xwm and the
> > whole menu system.
> 
> Incorrect.  We have sensible-editor and sensible-pager as a compromise
> to provide backwards compatibility.  It has been a Unix convention for
> programs needing to run an editor to consult the EDITOR environment
> variable (or the VISUAL environment variable) first and run a default
> editor if it is not set.  A similar convention followed for pagers.
> Since this has become entrenched many Unix programs, it is a behavior
> that has become expected by many Unix experts.
> 
> Ideally, we would modify all programs to honor this convention
> themselves, but since that is impractical considering the large amount
> of software we have from many different sources, it was easier to write
> a script that implements this convention and make that the default
> editor to be called by programs.
> 
> There is no such convention, however, for X terminals, so we do not need
> to implement one for compatibility's sake.  And since there are better
> ways to handle multiple xterm-like programs (IMHO), we should use these
> techniques instead of applying this old, unnecessary convention.

Tell us what are better (this means: easier for user and needing less
coding in existing apps) ways to have different xterm for each user.

> Finally, I would like to add that any program that has the path
> hard-coded to something like xterm, or an equivalent, is broken.

You are right. Such program is broken. But I use such one for mailing.