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Re: I don't want to use xterm, why am I forced to use it any way?



Hi,

From: Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Subject: Re: I don't want to use xterm, why am I forced to use it any way?
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 03:30:15 +0100

> A user can override sensible-x-terminal in ~/bin and include ~/bin before
> everything else in his/her PATH. Is something wrong with this solution?
> (Of course this doesn't work if scrpts call /usr/bin/sensible instead just
> sensible, so they shouldn't). Of course this would need to be documented.

Yes, we can do in such a way.  IMO, it is a very basic setting
to enable native language be displayed.  Such a basic setting should
be standardized and written in Debian Policy.  

The first reason I don't like the ~/bin way is that usage of '~/bin' is 
a bit too tricky to be a standard.

These days more and more softwares adopt gettext but the native 
messages are broken if the terminal doesn't support the language.  
Thus *all* Debian softwares which invoke terminal emulator should 
use the standard way.

The second reason I don't like the ~/bin way is that there may be 
softwares for which a terminal emulator has to be specified in full 
path in their configuration files.  (Though this may be modified
by modifying the source code).


> > I read the previous discussion about sensible-x-terminal and I think
> > the disadvantage of the idea is that shell script wrapper is slow.
> Starting an xterm is not a time critical action. You don't need to start
> hundreds of xterms in a few seconds, for example.

Then why shouldn't we take sensible-x-terminal?

In short, I cannot find any positive reason not to take sensible-x-terminal.
Almost of users don't need?  Then a few users need.  There are other ways to
do this?  Then I don't understand why this way is inferior to these.  

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.or.jp>
http://surfchem0.riken.go.jp/~kubota/


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