Subject: Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why?
From: [email-masked] (Fergus Henderson)

28 Jan 1997 09:23:33 -0800
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Content-Type: text
Original-To: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)
Original-Cc: [email-masked] (gnu-win32)
In-Reply-To: <[email-masked]> from "Jim Balter" at Jan 27, 97 09:00:27 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Original-Sender: [email-masked]

Jim Balter wrote:
> 
> Stephan Mueller <[email-masked]> 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 <[email-masked]>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger [email-masked]         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
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