Re: Bug#197835: [PROPOSAL]: integrated environments are allowed
On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 01:02:37AM -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-06-17 at 20:28, Colin Watson wrote:
>
> > I think this is very bad. At the moment policy says that my EDITOR and
> > PAGER variables have priority over what random programs think is a good
> > idea, which I think is excellent.
>
> Yes...but the idea is if programs have a preferred version for a
> reason. Integrated environments like GNOME and KDE have very good
> reasons to prefer a particular editor, namely the one they ship with.
Normally they don't have a good reason, except that they can rely on the
existance of that editor. *If* I set my $EDITOR variable, I prefer this
editor to be used, no matter whether I'm using a console program, mutt,
or Evolution. If I wanted to use a different editor, I would set my
EDITOR variable differently.
Please keep in mind that it is important that the user should be in control
of his or her environment. When I set the EDITOR variable, but this is
not honored, I don't feel like I'm in control. Please keep also in mind
that there is a reason people set the EDITOR variable: they have an
editor, which they are used to, which they can handle, which they have
configured to their needs, and therefore want to use. It is a bad idea to
force users to learn a different editor for different tasks.
Of course it might be a good idea to enhance sensible-editor and co to
use a different editor in different environment by default (i.e. if the
$EDITOR and $VISUAL variables are not set). Alternatively desktops could
check if EDITOR and VISUAL are set and if not set them to their
preferred editor.
- Sebastian, speaking as a user of vim, XEmacs, and sometimes gedit
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