On Sun, Nov 29, 1998 at 01:08:07AM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:
> ...if you know that. I didn't, and lots of people don't. That means that
> any non-English-language user cannot reasonably use joe by default.
Then you are saying that any non-English-language user cannot reasonably
use Debian by default. A large portion of using any 'nix, part of the
culture, is defined in four letters. RTFM. Like it or not, the predominant
language of TFM is English. I don't think it is reasonable to set defaults
based on ignorance, no matter what the reason.
> > Do most of the terminal programs out there also default to showing
> > high-ascii properly?
> I'm not sure what you mean. For terminal emulators, rxvt, xterm, and the
> Linux console all seem to show high ascii.
But I'm not talking Linux. I'm talking in general. You have to
remember, part of the power of Unix is remote administration from terminals
other than the console. That is why I am sitting here in a VT100 terminal
on my WinNT box telnetted into my Linux box which had its own monitor and
keyboard. Or I could be in my bedroom on a VT220 dumb term. I am talking
about what connects to the box, not what is *ON* the box.
> > Loaded question as they don't. Here's another one... Does less default
> > to showing high ascii? :)
> Seemingly not. It would be nice if it did. (Even nicer if we had
> left-quote and right-quote characters like they do in Windows :))
alias less='less -r'
-r Causes "raw" control characters to be displayed.
The default is to display control characters using
the caret notation; for example, a control-A (octal
001) is displayed as "^A". Warning: when the -r
option is used, less cannot keep track of the
actual appearance of the screen (since this depends
on how the screen responds to each type of control
character). Thus, various display problems may
result, such as long lines being split in the wrong
place.
Like I said, loaded question...
> > It is currently in the hands of the individual to RTFM.
...and up to the individual to RTFM or, at the very least, ask.
> My question is whether this should be the case. Many things in Debian are
> much better than other distributions (witness the backspace/delete
> situation) because we bother with such minutae.
But when considering such minutae once must consider all ascpects of it,
not just one.
--
Steve C. Lamb | Opinions expressed by me are not my
http://www.calweb.com/~morpheus | employer's. They hired me for my
ICQ: 5107343 | skills and labor, not my opinions!
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