Hi, (changing the subject a bit)
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Ralf Quint <freedos...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 1/19/2017 1:16 PM, Eric Auer wrote: >> Rugxulo, Tom, >> >> DOS files should always use DOS linebreaks, >> even if some DOS apps can deal with Unix ones. > +1 > > It's just too bad that a lot of people are seeing FreeDOS just as > another (low end) Linux these days... I don't think anyone realistically treats DOS as a "low-end" Linux. Maybe some DJGPP (GNU) tools are *nix-centric and must be treated accordingly, but overall I don't think anybody else is really pushing for DOS to be the "next Linux". I know you've mentioned this before, and I know you abhor the heavy *nix-isms and bloated (non-native) ports. Everyone always wants to suggest that DOS should have more modern features, but we always devolve into pessimism. "Why add to DOS? Just use Linux!" Which I think is unfair, I do think there's still room for improvement. It's not fair to let FreeDOS stagnate. It's open source, it should definitely be improved, and there's more than enough that could easily be done. Heck, we've already accomplished a great deal. ... Regarding text encodings, although it's a petty complaint, I do think that we should be careful not to just use what's popular without regard for space efficiency. I'm not really an i18n expert, but even things like UTF-8 aren't perfect for some languages, thus it wastes more space than a less-popular encoding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Disadvantages Same with CR+LF, why use it if you don't truly need it? I know it's a bit presumptuous, but I think most people can handle themselves and know how to convert files. It's not necessarily worth wasting lots of space on the 1% chance that somebody might use an old tool that can't handle it. Granted, this is a bad example, but overall you get the idea. With thousands of files, you have to be careful that you don't overlook the obvious inefficiencies. (I'm sure someone has a better example, perhaps MP3 vs. OGG or whatnot.) ... And, although this too isn't a major issue, I want to emphasize that using only DOS-native tools is a bit naive. I'm not against using familiar DOS tools when appropriate, but I don't think it's wrong to rely on some (reasonable!, limited number of) *nix tools if they perform the job better, easier, faster, etc. Just for example, common things like grep, sed, awk have been well-ported to DOS many times and are very convenient. Sure, I could whip up a quick QBasic or Rexx script instead (or edlin or even plain C or Pascal). But if sed is easier, I figure I might as well use that since it's easy to find ("standard"), even for DOS. This doesn't quite mean I want AutoTools polluting every DOS source build. In fact, I hate the complexity and billion dependencies of POSIX toolchains, but sometimes a few utilities can make a world of difference, even in non-*nix environments. As long as we aren't ignoring more obvious and simpler solutions, it's fine. ... Okay, so that was mostly obvious rambling, but I felt like I should mention it anyways. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
