From: lhall AT rfk DOT com (Larry Hall) Subject: Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why? 31 Jan 1997 07:18:00 -0800 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <2.2.32.19970131145102.0091308c.cygnus.gnu-win32@ma.ultranet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: lhall AT ma DOT ultranet DOT com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Original-To: "Grant Leslie" , "GNU-WIN32" Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com At 01:05 AM 1/31/97 -0400, Grant Leslie wrote: > >> From: Jim Balter >> Loose talk about "the average Win95 user", a person who would have >no >> interest in these tools, ignores the other end, average and not so >> average users who are familiar with these tools and want to fully >take >> advantage of their capabilities. > >These development tools are intended to develop software... This >software which is created WILL eventually be placed in the hands of >non-developers. Shouldn't every effort be made to remove as many >idiosyncrasies as possible _before_ that happens?? From what I've >read quite a few people would like to make money with the end >products. > >I don't know exactly what Cygnus envisions for these tools, yet Im >rather certain the companies they work with will be wanting them to >create software for people other than just the software developers in >that company. The tools themselves are not the end to the means.... > OK, I've been listening to all this for a while and I'd like to lay to rest this whole side of the argument. While I agree that there are end user issues for any package built with Cygnus tools, this is NOT a relevant argument in the text/binary file issue. If an application is built using Cygnus tools for the general Windows community and if there is a file which this application makes which should be viewable as a text file (in the Windows sense) by any Windows application, then it is the responsibilty of the APPLICATION that creates the file to make sure that it meets this need. Regardless of whether the Cygnus tools create, open, read, or write files as "text" or "binary" by default, if the end user is going to see it, presenting it to them in a manner consistent with the Windows environment is an APPLICATION issue, not a tools/development issue. So, can we say from here on that the discussion of text/binary files and what the defaults should be, etc. is limited to how the GNU tools (specifically things like the compiler, awk, tar, cat, gzip, etc.) will work with them? How non-technical Win95 users, who don't, won't, or shouldn't use these tools, are affected by any change should not be part of this discussion. Agreed? Larry Hall lhall AT rfk DOT com RFK Partners, Inc. (617) 239-1053 8 Grove Street (617) 239-1655 - FAX Wellesley, MA 02181 - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".