Sunday, October 30, 2011

Moving toward a unified Vim...

Linda W wrote:
> Tony Mechelynck wrote:
>
>> On 28/10/11 22:26, Linda W wrote: [...]
>>> If you put a symlink on linux, windows will see it as a hardlink.
>>> That means any file copies will go through it.
>> [...]
>>
>> If you set a symlink on a Linux (ext2, ext3, ext4, reiser, etc.)
>> filesystem, Windows won't see it at all because it cannot read those
>> filesystems. I was the one who mentioned symlinks, I mentioned them
>> in the context of double-boot, not of Cygwin, and I explicitly
>> mentioned ext2, ext3, ext4 and reiser filesystems. So who's
>> distorting whose words?
>
> ---- I'm not distorting anyone's words.
>
> I'm replying about things I've tried that don't work.
==== Seeing as how I explained, *in depth*, how you were mistaken, just
like every other argument against my case -- (except for one, which
informed, me, and I adapted my solution to fit the new
information...)...

So I adapted my solution to the only real problem, and no one came
up with any reason why my solution wouldn't work (or the kept claiming I
said something OTHER than what I said -- which after the 3-4th time,
started to get me a bit miffed. And then suddenly I was the bad person
for having to repeat myself for the 3rd or 4th time to someone who just
quoted the correct version of what I said but were claiming in their
response that I said something else.

But it seems once that became clear, there were no more objections
or claims of incompatibility. There's always claims that things were
done some way in the past...but that's true about every piece of
software that has ever existed. That hasn't stopped new
versions/standards of C, Perl, shell, linux, Windows...I don't know of
any software that still is viable to the user community that doesn't
grow and change.

So does anyone want to take the unenviable position of why Vim should
stay stuck with 1980's standards when the rest of the world has moved
on?

It wasn't until Vim6, that Vim even realized that HOME had been yanked
out from underneath them, -- the rest of the world moved on.

now believe me -- I've been on the other side of these issues often as
well. Take a look at the bash archives from about a month or two ago
where the behavior of bash broken longstanding scripts.

BUT THERE...it did so for NO good reason. No one used the old feature
cuz they thought it was broken! -- turns out it wasn't so broken, and it
had been usable, so it was made broken in 4.1. to follow the new POSIX
spec, which, is incompatible with the old posix spec. Except that the
feature/mode we are talking about was about bash's NON-POSIX,
"user-friendly mode"....so there was NO reason, even following a broken
standard to have changed it. (change was made to "-e" option to exit
on any non-zero status from any simple or complex command whereas
before, it was to detect any non-zero exist from specifically, *simple
commands*, that weren't error checked, but by including complex
commands, this meant that calculations (let a=b-b), would cause an fatal
error exist because it calculations return the 'not' of their final
calculation thus the calculation ((0)) would return '1' (false),

That and another arbitrary change was made that made all function call
no longer take the same return params that 'exit' would return (despite
a functions return is supposed to be equivalent to a program's exist
code).

Thy are reversing that decision, and the jury is still out as to whether
or not he's going to break 14 years of posix compliance to go with the
new and improved standard that isn't compatible with the old (in an area
of bash that is an extension and not even covered under posix!)...

So I'm not someone to just for every change, and fight against stupid
changes, but you have to be willing to weight the cost of a change
versus the overall benefit .. not just against the inconvenience of a
single user. When you see MANY users coming up with hacks and
workarounds to get around design decisions that once were valid, but now
be costing people more time and effort to work around than it's worth to
keep ith those decisions -- at that point, it's time to be
**practical**, and go with what's going to cause the least effort for
ongoing maintenance and future people's usage.

That doesn't mean there might not be a one time conversion 'pain' to
some new format, but if the payoff is much greater down the line --
that's what you have to keep your keys on... Not peoples immediate
gratification or pain levels.

This isn't an issue I've brought up for the first time. It isn't an
issue I just started dealing with.

I've been dealing with cross-platform .vim files and .bash/.profile
programs since the 80's. Getting Xenix and HP/UX to be compat with
SunOS/SGI/and dos-unix-shell work-alikes. I've had more than 2 decade
of experience working around these things. But I recognize when a
design that might have been right at one point in time, now is well past
the time of needing to be changed.

People need to realize. Designs of software are NOT cut in Stone. As
long as Bran maintains a vi-compat mode, he's doing his bit to
maintain core compat with required standards. But software was designed
to be able to be flexibly improved as needs and standards changed.

But I wish you'd stop arguing against all change.

There are basic text editing functions I can't do in vim in fixed with
fonts, that I can do in a web'browser text box because Vim is stuck
using some old DOS era text boxmodel.

Simple adopting a new display library would open the new features...but
I'm sure I've talked this point to death, unless anyone sees any other
problems with my proposals (other than them coming from me!)... (I know
that's a fairly negative point that kills alot of my proposals due to my
scintillating personality... *cough*....*ahem*...I'm only trying to do
what's best for the most...)... and I'll change my stance on something
mid-stream given new information that requires change -- just as I did
in this discussion. I'm not 'stuck in one position. I'll adapt to
realities brought to my attention that need attention (and did).

My persuasive style sucks (thanks you mom and dad for rasing me with
socratic method!)...but I do try to get a pretty wide perspective.


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