Re: Proposal for simplification

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hi Leonard,

On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 23:11 +0200, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:
> Hi Pavel,
> 
> On Fri, 2005-09-30 at 18:02 -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> > As I understand, there is a UTF-8 patch for S-Lang but not for ncurses.
> 
> Well Balint states ncurses has UTF-8 support and the UTF-8 support in
> slang2 is native, not an external patch.

I mean a patch for mc to add support for UTF-8 enabled terminals.  I
should have been more explicit, sorry.

> > You can ask the author of the patch about the motivation.
> 
> ? Are you speaking of my slang2 patch? If so then there must be a
> misunderstanding. If not then of which patch are you speaking?

I believe the patch was made by Red Hat long ago.

> > I assume that it's just easier to support one library.
> 
> I disagree. I hadn't grasped that you propose to drop ncurses.

The purpose is to have less work for the developers.  I'm sure that
support for UTF-8 enabled terminals will require different changes if
ncurses or S-Lang is used.

> By the way, should I commit the mcslang2 patch? It is an *addition* to
> the internal slang1. Any objections by anybody to go with 2 internal
> versions of slang for the moment?

I don't like this idea.  I suggest that we drop internal S-Lang
completely.  It takes too many efforts time to maintain compatibility
with several versions of S-Lang.  It adds more options to test.  It also
sets a bad example.

The reason why S-Lang was included in the first place was to simplify
life for those who don't have it.  Things have changed since then.  Most
users download precompiled versions with their distributions.  Those who
chose to compile mc can compile S-Lang.  mc has another dependency -
glib, and it is not included, so it needs to be compiled separately.

Our priority should be to make mc better.  Making it easy for a laymen
to compile should take the second seat.  Otherwise, mc will be dropped
by distributions as an obsolete piece of code.

Also, unbundling S-Lang will force us to make mc work perfectly with the
existing installed libraries (or at least with those that weren't too
badly patched).

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin