Mail Archives: cygwin/1997/01/29/04:48:43
Jim Balter, you wrote:
>
> Fergus Henderson wrote:
> >
> > Le me repeat: we're trying to port GNU software to Windows.
> > Do you have a better suggestion on how to do this?
>
> [...] yes, I suggest that the approach that has been taken by AT&T's
> UWIN, of abandoning the text/binary distinction altogether,
> is the best, most robust, lowest surprise factor, lowest cost
> approach.
That approach makes interoperability between gnu-win32 software and
non-gnu-win32 software impossible. It is *not* a low suprise factor
approach, because users will be continually surprised when they try to
use gnu-win32 tools on a Windows text file, or use Windows tools on a
gnu-win32 text file.
(Incidentaly, gnu-win32 already optionally supports that approach: you
can mount filesystems in binary mode. It's not the default, for
reasons stated above.)
> Files that contain CR's can be filtered,
That would break POSIX compatibility, and would cause lots of suprises
for binary files that happen to contain CRs.
> and/or the library
> could allow a special name form such as dos:filename that causes it to
> open the file in "text" mode.
Well, that's a constructive suggestion, but (a) requiring users to use
a special filename would be very inconvenient and error-prone,
and (b) that still doesn't solve the problem of using Windows tools on
gnu-win32 text files.
--
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.
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