Mail Archives: cygwin/1997/01/28/09:23:33
Jim Balter wrote:
>
> Stephan Mueller <smueller AT MICROSOFT DOT com> writes
>
> > IMO, the only way to truly solve this problem once and for all is to
> > gradually incorporate text/binary mode awareness into the official GNU
> > sources.
Yes, I agree.
> > That means that all fopens that really mean to open in binary
> > should have the 'b' added, and all code that follows fopens that really
> > mean text mode should be examined and changed if they assume things like
> > 'the size of the file equals the number of charcters in a read of the
> > whole file'. The code isn't 'bad' the way it is, it's just
> > Unix-centric, and not entirely ANSI conformant.
>
> Of course it's Unix-centric; it's GNU code, and GNU project is a Unix
> emulation.
Yes, of course, that explains the historical reasons.
But this is the GNU-win32 mailing list: we're trying to port GNU
software to Windows.
> > It will be more useful
> > and more portable if these things are fixed, and I'm sure in time they
> > will be.
>
> Why be sure of something that's probably false?
Le me repeat: we're trying to port GNU software to Windows.
Do you have a better suggestion on how to do this?
> The GNU project has limited goals, and they explicitly do not include
> [...] systems that have separate text and binary modes
Yes, the GNU-win32 project's goals are not the same as the GNU project's
goals. So?
> Notably, in POSIX systems, reading as many bytes from a file as stat says it
> contains is perfectly appropriate behavior, and GNU code won't be "dumbed"
> down for the sake of non-POSIX systems.
"Why be sure of something that's probably false?"
GNU code probably *will* be "dumbed down" for the sake of non-POSIX
systems, because (a) that seems to be the only way to achieve the
GNU-win32 project's goals and hence (b) the GNU-win32 developers will
supply the GNU code maintainers with patches to make it work on
GNU-win32 and (c) most of the GNU code maintainers will be quite happy
to incorporate patches that make their software more portable,
[not to mention the fact that (d) the GNU code maintainers and the
GNU-win32 developers often one and the same, namely Cygnus].
Even if there are a few recalcitrant GNU code maintainers
who refuse to accept these patches, that doesn't matter too much
*because it is free software* --- you can get the source and apply the
patches yourself.
--
Fergus Henderson <fjh AT cs DOT mu DOT oz DOT au> | "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh AT 128 DOT 250 DOT 37 DOT 3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
-
For help on using this list, send a message to
"gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".
- Raw text -