Re: Replace GNU long options with X resources (Re: Who wants long options anyway?)

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Article #72962

#72962

From: David J. MacKenzie
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1991 05:25

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A nice idea, but I don't think it can work.

The X conventions are not compatible with the POSIX requirements --
the X conventions are not a superset of the Unix getopt().  They would
need to be changed similarly to how we are considering changing the
current GNU getopt_long to allow POSIX conformance.

Allowing utilities to get default option settings from ~/.Xdefaults
(or wherever) could seriously break zillions of shell scripts, also.
They wouldn't be expecting `rm' to automatically run with the `-i'
option, or `ls' to run with `-FCB', or `chmod' to run with `-v', or
whatever settings users might choose.
--
David J. MacKenzie <djm@eng.umd.edu> <djm@ai.mit.edu>

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From: djm@eng.umd.edu (David J. MacKenzie)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Replace GNU long options with X resources (Re: Who wants long options anyway?)
Message-ID: <DJM.91Nov21002521@frob.eng.umd.edu>
Date: 21 Nov 91 05:25:21 GMT
References: <ANDREWFG.91Nov11124344@coral.dai.ed.ac.uk>
 <9111210308.AA03917@ifsrad>
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Project GLUE, University of Maryland
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In-Reply-To: greg@vis.UUCP's message of 20 Nov 91 11:07:58 GMT

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