Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 11:23:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Gary Kline <kline@tera.com> To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Cc: kline@tera.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Utilities and POSIX compliance.... Message-ID: <199605221823.LAA23578@athena.tera.com> In-Reply-To: <199605212101.OAA02018@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "May 21, 96 02:01:07 pm"
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According to Terry Lambert: > > `wc' is missing the -m (multibyte) flag, and I expect that > > other of the language/locale-specific utilities are missing > > these hooks. > > "Multibyte" is an evil, evil implementation of internationalization > (the process of making software localizable to a particular locale > using only data and environment, not code changes). It doesn't > deal at all with multinationalization (the process of making software > capable of simultaneously operating in several locales, generally > useful only for translators and language scholars). I'll buy your second premise, but not necessairily your first. Making everything multinational would probably take man-decades. Do you have a better idea? Better meaning realistically doable. > > I really can't be too sad about missing bogus locale implementation > flags. > > > Can any of the BSD gurus point me at the person or persons > > who are working on the utilities? Since there are around > > 300 utilities, I'm guessing that there are several people > > involved. > > > > I'd like to know why more of the Berkeley utilities aren't > > POSIX-compliant. That is, why, without some minor--or even > > major--hacks, these utilities haven't been brought up to > > standard. The BSD kernel is A++, but not the utils... . > > I believe they are all i18n. The general consensus is to not > POSIX'ify if there will be a significant loss of functionality, > or if doing so would mean moving from a BS source to a GPL'ed one. How would adding more of the POSIX standards cause a loss of functionality?? From what is in the 4.4final release of BSD (1993/4), most of the utility set are, worst case, missing only a few flags. Before remembering the FSF's work, I hacked some of the BSD utilities into compiliance. Then found that GNU has the majority of the utilities re-written. The code ought to parallelize nicely, and even if not, having the POSIX compliance shouldn't cause any of functional degradation. (Speculation:: I haven't tested my GNU ports yet.) > > I believe nmost of the Lite2 code has not been integrated -- there > are supposedly some serious strides towards POSIX in some of the > unintegrated code. Thanks for the tip. Do you know if it is the Lite2 code on the Walnut Creek CD? It might be a big win to have the latest version of the Lite release around. BTW, am I right to assume that Lite itself is dead? Can't imagine anyone hacking on that stuff, but then... . gary kline
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