[5022] in testers
Re: linux 9.0.10: tcsh/csh.login
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Tue Jul 17 13:13:18 2001
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:13:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>
cc: Mitchell E Berger <mitchb@mit.edu>, <testers@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20010717103745.W4333@multics.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.30L.0107171304290.13888-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
'Scuse my butting in, but this fascinates me.
Frankly, I could see color ls listings as being a "selling point" for
Athena for new users - y'know, the reason we contemplated a facelift in
the first place? The "monochromicity" is reassuring and expected to older
users; it may make newer users wonder if they've stepped back in time
twenty years.
But there's definitely a performance difference from all that
filestatting. I've seen it. Consistently. So my question is - and excuse
the braindeadness of it, if it's not SAPweb this month then it's not
swapped in for me - how hard is it to make it easy for users to enable
color listings locally?
I definitely agree that the default should be monochrome ls, and that the
globals and/or system-level files should stick with that. But I should be
able to flip a switch or add a couple of lines to a local ~/*rc file of
some kind and change to color listings. Is this the case? If it isn't, can
we make it the case? If it is, can we document how somewhere for the
novices?
In short, it should be the user's choice to trade performance for spiffy
color, and that trade should not be made by default, and the user should
be able to easily find out how to do it if they so wish.
-Todd
