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Question for Bill Allombert: the "menu" mess



Hi Bill.  As the packager of "ratmenu", I've had to grapple with the
menu package, which you maintain.

Bill, can you tell us the reason you chose to implement your own unique
configuration language for "menu"?  Why did you choose to implement it
in C++ instead of re-using an already existing language like bourne
shell, tcl, or python?  And finally, why did you make the menu language
so different from the other languages out there that even you couldn't
debug the problems it was having in ratmenu, and that I couldn't figure
it out because the language is undocumented?

I admire you as a developer, but would like to learn how it is you
arrived at the design decisions you did.  I'm more of a traditional Unix
programmer myself; C, bourne, perl, python and tcl are my main
languages.

If menu is a legacy program written by someone else, I understand.
Thank you for your efforts in keeping it up-to-date and working.
Although people still get mysterious problems with it whose causes are
not obvious when looking at the relevant menu configuration files.

Ted

--
It's not true unless it makes you laugh, but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.

Eukleia: Ted Walther
Address: 5690 Pioneer Ave, Burnaby, BC  V5H2X6 (Canada)
Contact: 604-430-4973

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