On 1/22/2002 at @816, [EMAIL PROTECTED] quoth:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chris Devers) wrote:
>> stuff alike -- have to either become consistent or agnostic in the way
>> they handle line endings, and I'm not at all sure what the best way to
>> resolve this is on a general level. Inheriting two more or less opposite
>> conventions has been making things way too messy...
>
>For the record, does anyone here know why the two Steves picked
> CR instead of LF back when they started this little company we
> hate to love? Is there a practical advantage?
The Mac presumably uses CR because the Apple ][ used CR (although they
could have changed it; Apple was never very concerned about compatibility
between the two).
I've switched to LF on all my text docs now; there's no advantage to using CR.
>Similarly, : vs / as separator, the 1901 datestamp, etc. Is the
> Steve way actually "better" than the pre-existing Unix way, or
> were they being difficult just to "think different"?
Regarding separators, / is useful in filenames. (I've got files named,
say, "Journal 12/21/1993".) There's no inherent reason why forward-slash
should be considered God's Own Directory Separator, although there have
been many times I've wished I could use a colon. As fervent as Apple
lectured against using pathnames at all, I don't see why they couldn't
have picked something nobody ever uses (like, um, backslash).
As for the others, I don't think it ever occured to them in 1982-1984
that over 15 years later they'd be merging in a version of unix. I can't
blame them for that. Unix and Mac OS were two systems designed for
completely different audiences, that grew up in a time where
standardization wasn't a very big concern.
>If so, that and a time machine would fix the problem. ;)
I think that's what we'll need. :)
--
Aaron Hall : Bugs> Rabbit season!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Daffy> Duck season!
: Bugs> Rabbit season!
: Daffy> Duck season! FIRE!!!
Macintosh/UNIX Weenie, Network Flack, and...eh, whatever.
