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Re: sensible-x-terminal and x-terminal-emulator



On Sat, Jul 22, 2000 at 08:55:15AM +0900, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
> From: Malcolm Parsons <malcolm@ivywell.screaming.net>
> Subject: Re: sensible-x-terminal and x-terminal-emulator
> Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 18:39:41 +0100
> 
> > Maybe I should have explained the per user override bit above.
> > This can currently only be done manually as follows:
> > 
> > ln -s `which hanterm` ~/bin/x-terminal-emulator
> > export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
> 
> If I use other UNIX/Linux system then I might do as you said
> but, fortunately, I use Debian.  And Debian provides us many
> excellent tools, one of which is alternatives, so it is not
> necessary to use '~/bin' nor tedious 'ln -s' in almost all cases.

The alternatives system is great, but it is for system settings, not for user
preferences.  It is still useful to have, as with it I only need to create
one symlink in ~/bin to cause all properly pacakged programs to use my 
choice of xterm.

> And if there are (rare) cases where a user needs to fiddle with
> '~/bin' or tedious 'ln -s' manually with the present alternatives 
> mechanism and sensible-x-terminal-emulator can handle the cases
> well enought then why you are opposed to sensible-x-terminal-emulator?

There are many cases where I would recommend a user to do this. The sysadmin
may be a vim fan, and the user an emacs fan,  netscape vs mozilla, less vs
more, etc.  You wanted a way for users to set their default xterm separately
from the system default, and this is the way to do it.

> I believe that sensible-x-terminal-emulator will become one of
> excellent tools of Debian in the near future.

I believe a more general script to allow the user to choose what programs
they want to run would be even more useful.  I am not against the use
of sensible-x-terminal-emulator by people who need it.  I am against making
it replace the x-terminal-emulator alternative, as that would require
repackaging too much software.

-- 
Malcolm Parsons
finger malcolm@bits.bris.ac.uk for info



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