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Re: setopt interactivecomments



On 04/17/2014 12:37 PM, Bart Schaefer wrote:

Bart:
Well, *my* adoption of Linux is continually frustrated by exactly the
opposite thinking, to wit, that every new release of something has to
be based on the bloodiest edge and can disregard whatever came before.
Yup. There's that problem too. This is by no means a simple issue and all perils considered, I quite
understand that things default to your way of thinking.
Oh, look, a new version of jellymaker is out -- but the API is entirely
different, so I'll have to try to find new versions of everything that
uses it, and it requires the latest libsnozzberry which also has a new
API, so I'll also have to try to replace everything else that depends
on *that*, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks, but no.
I hate that sort of thing too. It's a question of separating the wheat from the chafe tho, is it not? On the one hand we have the kiddies with their half cooked 'new' versions of Jellymaker changing things willy-nilly, OTOH we have, in my opinion, a slightly too conservative view with the shells. Excesses in one direction are not a good reason to
avoid sober changes in the other direction.

} It was longstanding usage that we write with goose quill on parchment.
} Let's forget about longstanding usage, break with all tradition, and
} have zsh, as she comes out of the box, show folks what she can do.

We [*] did try that back in around, oh, 1996 IIRC.  It was a mess.  It
turns out that if turn on ALL the cool features by default, the result
is even more confusing than having your backspace key not work.
Sure, efforts in this direction are dangerous, and I'd not suggest (even with my lack of experience) that ALL of *anything* be turned on by default, but sheesh, can't we have the backspace key by default? I'm sure there must be dozens of 'no risk' options that virtually everyone wants and that come with no gottchas. Me, I'm still so overwhelmed by all the options that I don't even know what 90% of them do, and I'm probably missing out on good stuff that I don't even know exists. If there was an option of having a
more souped up install, it might be educational to play with.

What did eventually happen after the mess was cleaned up is that the
zsh-newuser-install system got created.  It could use an update, but
is intended to walk you through enabling the stuff that you're most
likely to want.
Sounds exactly right. I seem to have missed it.

[*] I use the term "we" loosely because I personally quit working on zsh
for a couple of years until sanity had been restored.
Well, sanity matters. I take a rather conservative view on most things myself, but at the same time, I think a few things are now so bedrock standard that we can safely part with the traditions of 20 years ago on some issues. What, really, would break if the backspace was enabled by default? What would break if interactive comments was on by default? Who
would complain? Does anyone on Earth really not want command recall?



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