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From: Gary Kline <kline@tera.com>
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Subject: Re: Utilities and POSIX compliance....
To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert)
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 11:23:53 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: kline@tera.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
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