[1870] in testers
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Aug 13 12:43:52 1991
From: ckclark@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 12:44:01 -0400
To: vanharen@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: testers@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, jfc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, sauron@ATHENA.MIT.EDU,
In-Reply-To: vanharen@ATHENA.MIT.EDU's message of Tue, 13 Aug 91 12:10:08 -0400 <9108131610.AA19314@fries.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: ckclark@mit.edu
>>>>> On Tue, 13 Aug 91 12:10:08 -0400, vanharen@ATHENA.MIT.EDU said:
vanharen> something wrong here? I would argue that emacs is
vanharen> very broken, if the command that the user used to type
vanharen> no longer works correctly. I realize that emacs has
vanharen> changed drastically since 18.54, and that the new code
vanharen> may do things "differently", but in this case, that
vanharen> difference is a bug. I don't care if it's documented
vanharen> in the manpage or not, it's a bug. Can you give me
vanharen> any real reason that emacs needs flags in a particular
vanharen> order when every other well-behaved X program in the
vanharen> world can deal with the args in any order?
Before you burst a blood vessel, I'd like to say the line as typed would
not have worked in emacs version 18.54, either. The set of arguments
which must come at the beginning of the command line is not new to
18.57. I agree that it is unfortunate that emacs puts such strict
demands on the order of the command line arguments. Part of this is
because of stupidity in the implementation, and part of it is because it
does some of its argument parsing in elisp and some of it in C. This
gave me more than one headache when modifying emacs to accept the some X
arguments it does accept.
vanharen> Furthermore, the manpage lists four options as having
vanharen> to be first on the command line if they are used.
vanharen> What if I want to use two of these options at the same
vanharen> time?
You can, if you speficy them in the right order. Read the man page I
submitted, which is currently in the emacsdev locker. The former man
page did not make it clear what the argument parsing was like.
vanharen> At the very *least*, this is a *major* change to emacs
vanharen> and needs to be strongly advertised in the release
vanharen> notes; however, it might very well be suggested that
vanharen> if this is not fixed, emacs 18.57 not be released,
vanharen> since it will undoubtedly cause breakage and
vanharen> frustration for many people. Especially considering
vanharen> that there is another substantial breakage... (the
vanharen> x-mouse stuff).
There has been no change in the parsing of command line arguments
between the version in the previous release and the new one. Additional
X command line options have been added, to provide ease in use for those
familiar with typical options to X Toolkit applications; for example,
-borderwidth, -iconic, etc. There has been no loss of functionality or
increase in confusion in this respect. As for the x-mouse stuff, I
would not call it a ``substantial'' breakage. The vanilla version 18.54
distribution from the FSF wouldn't have let you get away with that,
either.
The use of command-line options to emacs has never been easy or
intuitive; however, if anything, it has become easier with the addition
of familiar X options.
-Calvin
