This is the mail archive of the cygwin-apps mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: cygutils: replace ascii with ESR's?


On 10/30/2011 8:26 PM, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
ESR maintains a standalone ascii(1) which appears to have more features
than cygutils':

http://catb.org/~esr/ascii/

Should we replace this? Patch attached if so.

Well, I have mixed feelings. On the PRO side:


1) smaller cygutils == fewer headaches for me. Also, since cygutils is now pulled in by several Base packages, the smaller it becomes, the better.

2) Following the same thought, if something is available (and maintained) "elsewhere" then cygutils shouldn't duplicate effort, unless its version really adds value -- or is unique to the cygwin platform (e.g. cygdrop). [Hmm...dump.exe = 'od -Ax -tx2z'?]

3) "show all names" for a single character feature is...interesting. I like the "aliases" listed for '>' (includes "gozinta" -- and I haven't seen 'bra' and 'ket' used for '<' and '>' since Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Dynamics...tho technically it is '<|' and '|>')

However, on the CON side:

1) I really find the default table output of ESR's version rather ugly (and the hex only -x, decimal only -d, and octal only -o tables are downright hideous).

2) No long options (so -h/-? work, but --help doesn't. Ditto -v vs. --version). And no --license.

3) Not sure if this matters, but ESR's version has no option to display the high-bit-set character codes (128..255). I find this "feature" of cygutils-ascii much less useful these days, now that charset:oem (and rxvt) are as-good-as-dead, and other terminals with *real* charset support -- like mintty, xterm, or rxvt-unicode -- are gaining almost complete prevalence on cygwin.


I'll wait and see what other folks think before making a decision.


Comments, anyone?

--
Chuck


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]