From: lhall AT rfk DOT com (Larry Hall RFK Partners Inc) Subject: RE: Why text=binary mounts 9 Jan 1998 19:47:08 -0800 Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980109111148.00a46e40.cygnus.gnu-win32@pop.ma.ultranet.com> References: <01BD1C69 DOT BBA294A0 DOT tiberius AT braemarinc DOT com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: "Gary R. Van Sickle" , "gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com" At 07:15 PM 1/8/98 -0600, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote: >Let me address one sure-to-come-up complaint right now: the notion that it >would be too much work to 'fix' all the existing code. How much time and >effort is wasted on 'working around' the current situation? Certainly more >time than it would take to search-and-replace "w" with "wt", etc. OK, you've come up with yet ANOTHER solution to this problem. You wouldn't be the first or probably the last. So what are YOU going to do about it? You raise the issue that the "fix" is generally "dismissed" as a result of being too much "work". From my perspective, the people with this view probably agree with the notion that the "fix" must occur but they have found work-arounds for their particular environments which are suitable and don't require much personal time investment. Those people who have not and need something else complain loudly but seem just as unwilling to take on the herculean task. For the moment, this is still largely a GNU-cenric project in spirit, without a large, committed development team behind it. That said, let's all acknowledge that while the users of this software may agree in general that a particular course of action may be beneficial, unless people VOLUNTEER to undertake the task, changes are NOT going to happen quickly. I personally don't feel like I've invested any large amount of time to work- around my text/binary issues, although I don't have many. Certainly it doesn't add up to anywhere near the time investment that would be necessary for me to go into even some of the source of these tools and make changes to alleviate the difficulties. Certainly one could argue that collectively all users have spent some significant time working out these issues for themselves and that maybe if that time was spent, collectively and in an organized fashion, fixing the tools, we'd all benefit. However, as I said, unless someone organizes a volunteer effort, things aren't going to change quickly. So, if someone wants to pick up and organize that effort, great. MAYBE I'd even be willing to help. However, I'm not certain that having all sorts of individuals posting to this list with general algorithms for fixing the problem is useful, unless the one who posts actually might entertain the thought of making the changes, organizing a group to do so, or maybe even somehow sponsoring Cygnus to do it for them. I'm not trying to downplay the issue here and I certainly don't want to discourage people from discussing issues and solutions. But this particular issue comes up frequently and always ends up being debated in a vacuum. Admonishing others on this list or the list in general for not fixing problems one finds intolerable in the current software is unfair. Its not productive. Perhaps we can find a different approach in regard to dealing with the text/binary issue and others like it? I can see some overall benefit from this. Larry Hall lhall AT rfk DOT com RFK Partners, Inc. (781) 239-1053 8 Grove Street (781) 239-1655 - FAX Wellesley, MA 02181 - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".