Re: Bug#95975: mutt: doesn't use charset anymore
On Wed 02 May 2001, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> close 95975
I disagree about whether the bug is closed, as you "forget" to notice
parts of my message. However, I don't feel like petty BTS games (*)
> On May 02, Paul Slootman <paul@debian.org> wrote:
>
> >So I should now set en environment variable to get mutt working the way
> >it used to, which was a "reasonable" mode of operation. IMHO that's in
> >violation of policy section 10.9:
> >
> > A program must not depend on environment variables
> > to get reasonable defaults.
> You'd better reassign this bug to libc then, guess what is mutt using to
> determine if a character is printable or not?
Well, (as I wrote), mutt's manual.txt says that the charset setting is
used for that.
> >So what's the point of the charset setting? After all, the manual.txt
> It tells mutt about which charaset you are typing.
The exact quote from the docs is:
Character set your terminal uses to display and enter textual data.
Note the "display" in addition to "enter". So not only:
> It tells mutt about which charaset you are typing.
but also what can be displayed. If that's no longer the case, at least
fix the documentation! And perhaps add a note about the necessary
environment variables.
> >Obviously it doesn't work that way anymore! So don't say I should read
> It just does not work the way you think it does.
Neither does it work the way it's documented. As this is a change from
long-standing previous behaviour, I don't think you can skim over it in
such a trivial manner. As a fortune quote says (paraphrasing):
"if the code and the comments disagree, both are wrong". I feel this
also applies to "the code and the documentation".
(*) I really hate it when people close bugs with a one-liner (or less)
answer, without any substantiating motivation. Especially when parts of
the argumentation of the bug are ignored. What's the problem with
leaving the bug open until the discussion is closed? Such behaviour is
pretty childish.
Paul Slootman
--
home: wurtel@spamcop.net http://www.wurtel.demon.nl/
work: paul@murphy.nl http://www.murphy.nl/
debian: paul@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
isdn4linux: paul@isdn4linux.org http://www.isdn4linux.org/
Reply to: