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Re: all xterms



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.

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

Brian


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