Re: MC/ncurses on cygwin: Borders turn into chinese characters and layout screws up

[Adrian May <adrian alexander may gmail com>]

Charles,

1. If you could see the screenshot you wouldn't suppose I was actually
using this software. I reported that bug for the sake of your project,
not because I'm hoping for a solution. I have several mc clones on
both my windows and linux boxes. I was actually looking for a mc style
plugin for vim, and tripped over this by accident. I wouldn't even
install any fix if you made me one, because I let cygwin decide which
versions of everything are installed. I honestly don't care whether
you fix it or not. I sacrificed my time to report it for purely
magnanimous reasons.

2. Does anybody really believe that the open source economy runs on
people wanting to feel that "warm, fuzzy glow" of helping somebody
else? Rubbish. I contribute to open source projects myself because I
have to fix or implement things that my employer wants, so I
contribute the changes so the problem doesn't bounce back at me. I do
get paid for it, and my employer doesn't get the free lunch he
expected. Intel, IBM, Google, etc all put money in, not least as a way
of bringing down Microsoft. Linux distros make money by selling
consultancy, or white labeling into netbooks, etc. A lot of the
funding comes through academic channels. This is an economy just like
any other. If cygwin really doesn't have any funding, that would
explain why it still ships such old versions of things like mc. Maybe
you should put up some adverts so you can pay somebody to maintain it
without your wife and kids missing you.

3. Even if you really think working on open source stuff makes you
some kind of Mother Theresa, that doesn't mean I want to be her as
well. I've tipped off the maintainers, and that's about as much time
as I have for this. Last time I reported a bug like this I got told to
post it to a different list, and then that list told me to repost it
somewhere else. This was all within a single project - I think it was
android. Why is that my job? I wanted to preempt that this time. I
suppose you think android is a warm-fuzzy-glow project as well, right?

4. You can all choose to ignore the bug because you don't like how I
reported it, but that really would be childish. You'd still have the
bug. For reasons best known to yourselves, you do care about the
quality of the product, otherwise, you shouldn't be calling yourself
the maintainers. This looks like an important one because it probably
affects anything built on curses. Sulk if you want to, but don't call
that maintenance.

5. I did trawl through the bug reporting page I quoted, in spite of
its patronising tone. You must admit, it is rather patronising, and it
stinks of your frustration at people not reporting bugs in the way
you'd like them to. Seems like there are a lot of people like me
around. Maybe there's a reason for that. I missed the bit about
cygcheck because all that page did was call me stupid before sending
me on the runaround trying to find out which list I was supposed to
use. Contrary to Christopher's action-oriented image of me, I do
generally have patience with long documents, but I don't enjoy being
lectured to about helpful communications by a page that itself is most
unhelpfully written. If you guys weren't so busy polishing your halos
you might take my suggestion of writing a little html form and
searching for dupes automatically. That page also reeks of the
attitude repeated all over this thread that your bugs are the users'
problems. That's why I expected a repeat of the android story. I was
also expecting you all to point your fingers at each other, which has
happened before. I don't think it's my duty to chair that kind of
kindergarten, so I told you up front to leave me out of it. I still
feel that way in spite of your trying to turn this bug into my problem
and simultaneously telling me how big hearted you are and that you're
going to punish me by not fixing your own bug. I'm afraid you can't
spite my face by cutting off your own nose though.

6. I did actually give you all the information you need and I don't
care why your mail server spat it back. Which version of cygwin? Any
that ships mc 4.6.1. Seeing as Yuri says that's ancient, I guess that
would be pretty much any version of cygwin. I told you how to
reproduce it: just install Chinese fonts and type "mc". If that
doesn't work and you need more help from me, I'll try to find the
time, but that would be me doing you a favour and not vice versa.

Adrian.