I am against making it a requirement. I think plugins are to be mantained, and if the one who writes them knows C, he can write them in C; if he knows bash; he could write them in bash.
If compatibility issues were the main concern, we could let people know about the caveats of using each programming language, and some guidelines about what kinds of plugins are guaranteed or more likely to work in all environments... I am afraid that, in that case, any *nix shell would not meet the crossplatform criteria. People would debate on "We suggests that you..." vs "We demand that you..."; but, either way, both could agree on "We want to make you aware of...". I am familiar with the issue, since a long time ago there was a push to remove all the echo -ne and then only use standard shell techniques... I don't think it worked well. And then ubuntu make a softlink from /usr/bin/sh to /usr/bin/dash instead of /usr/bin/bash; which all of a sudden broke a lot of plugings, because they were changed to #!/bin/bash.. At some point most using shells needed bash, but had as header !#/bin/sh.... in the plugin And we spend time wondering what happened... The point was: They needed bash, so they should have #!/bin/bash, not #!/bin/sh... My point is: Some plugins requrie bash. If we only change the "echo -ne" we are still not guraranteed to have any issues for other reasons. The way to do it is to tell the developper... Or at least make him or her aware of the issue... Not to force him to use a particular language or a particular shell. A tool or a script that transform each using echo -ne, could be made, but someone must be responsable of mantaining it... Certainly, if the one who wrote the plugin used bash, this would be a requirement for his or her plugin. Soon, though, we will have a model for all plugins when the mathemagix plugin becomes the model for all other plugins and the suggested way in which plugins should be written and docummented to assure portability. Those are my two cents. Peace. -Adrian. On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Sam Liddicott <s...@liddicott.com> wrote: > He is correct to advocate printf. There is an entry in the bash FAQ in > relation to portable programming that endorses his view. > > Sam > > On Jul 25, 2012 5:37 PM, "Miguel de Benito Delgado" > <m.debenito.delg...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Any thoughts on this anyone? I know very little about shell >> compatibility issues.. >> ________________ >> Miguel de Benito. >> >> >> On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 6:34 AM, Bernd Losert <berndlos...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> > I am not sure if this has been pointed out or not, but a lot of the >> > plugin code in src/plugins/*/bin/tm_* uses the echo command in such a >> > way that it only works correctly if your shell is bash. I use zsh as >> > my shell and when I run something like xypic for example, I always get >> > these -n when the session starts. To avoid this issue, I suggest >> > rewriting anything with echo with printf instead as the behavior of >> > printf is the same across *NIX systems, unlike with echo. >> > >> > -- >> > Bernd >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Texmacs-dev mailing list >> > Texmacs-dev@gnu.org >> > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/texmacs-dev >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Texmacs-dev mailing list >> Texmacs-dev@gnu.org >> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/texmacs-dev > > > _______________________________________________ > Texmacs-dev mailing list > Texmacs-dev@gnu.org > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/texmacs-dev > _______________________________________________ Texmacs-dev mailing list Texmacs-dev@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/texmacs-dev