That's right, this is all counter-intuitive behaviour but not necessarily bug. I can't honestly classify my expectations as a bug even if other applications behave as you described. It looks like upstream did not implement this function and if so, this is a wishlist rather than a bug.
What you described is a different (recognised) problem: "abiword: silently fails to open files" - http://bugs.debian.org/528679 It has been reported upstream, but there were no response so far. I'm merging this bug report with 528679. Thank you. Regards, Dmitry. On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:10:02 A. Costa wrote: > > User can even save more than one > > document without closing the editor - this invalidates your > > expectations regarding ruturn error code as well. > > True, if and only if the program: > > 1) Ignores the unfound filename. > 2) Starts the GUI. > 3) Stays open. > > If a file 'foo' exists, 'abiword foo' always tries to open it. > Even device files: 'abiword /dev/null' runs, opens, and prints "null" > in the title bar; 'abiword /dev/zero' hangs 'abiword'. > > The question is: if invoked via CLI with a single filename that > doesn't exist, what should a word processor, or any GUI with an > editable data format, do? (No other instances running.) A quick > survey: > > 1) 'gnumeric', 'gimp', 'gnucash', 'rezound', 'audacity', all pop up a > "file not found" message, then the default GUI. > > 2) 'lowriter' and the rest of the 'libreoffice' suite pop > up a box that says the file isn't found, > then quit with exit code 0. > > 3) 'kword' and 'pw' ("pathetic writer") create a file with the > of name of unfound filename. > > 4) 'gaupol' does as 'abiword' currently does. > > Seems there's no general consensus or standard. I haven't found a GUI > editor that does what 'ls' does: > > 5) 'ls' prints a "file not found" message to STDERR, > and quits with an exit code of 2. > > > F="/tmp/abi.abw" touch "$F" && abiword "$F" > > That won't function without a semicolon: > > F="/tmp/abi.abw" ; touch "$F" && abiword "$F" > > Then it runs just like a file creation from the command line would. > You may have inadvertently discovered a new bug. Should a 0 byte file > be a valid '.abi' format?
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