Questionnaire (maybe)

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm signing off for three weeks after tomorrow, and since it's the end
of the year, and since you can't move these days without someone
giving you a questionnaire to fill in, I thought maybe we could do the
same.  Well, perhaps.


                        Zsh Development Group

  Our Mission:  To boldly synergize state-of-the-art development
  technologies in leveraging innovative cross-platform solutions
  providing user functionality at the command interface level and
  beyond.

[Stars and    ]    Our Customer Relations Department would value
[Stripes here ]    highly your input via the enclosed questionnaire.
[             ]    Thank you for your cooperation.  Have a nice day.

[Hier Deutsche]    Bitte fuellen Sie das Formular unten aus, damit
[Bundesflagge ]    wir unser Serviceangebot staendig verbessern
[             ]    koennen.  Danke fuer Ihre Zeit!

[Il Tricolore ]    Vi preghiamo di compilare il modulo sottostante.
[qui          ]    Grazie per il vostro tempo.

[Le Tricoleur ]    Prie`re de compiler le module attache'.  Merci
[ici          ]    bien pour votre temps. (*)

[Union Jack   ]    Look, just fill in the damn form.  I've had a hard
[here         ]    day and I can't be bothered with all you users
[             ]    whingeing on the whole time. (**)

(*)  Sorry for this one, I just took the Italian and changed the
     endings.
(**) Pending new EU-approved translation.


1. Was your contact with the Zsh Development Group
   a. Positive?
   b. Negative?
   c. Who the heck *are* those guys??

2. Did you find the answer(s) to your query:
   a. Trivial?
   b. Impenetrable?
   c. Subtly misleading?
   d. All the above and then some?

3. How promptly was your query handled?
   a. A patch appeared even before I had finished typing.
   b. A patch doing something completely different appeared
      ten minutes later.
   c. My query set off an exchange of seventeen consecutive patches,
      none of which seems to have anything to do with the problem.
   d. It's only a two line fix, and I've so far been waiting six
      years for it to appear.

4. How many bugs are you aware of in your version of zsh?
   a. How long have we got?
   b. Is this thing resistant to antibiotics, or what?
   c. I can't believe you're even daring to ask that.
   d. I don't know, I only ever type `gtetris' and that works OK.

5. Do you find the humour of British members of the development group:
   a. Wearing?
   b. Incomprehensible?
   c. Indetectable?

6. In your opinion, what does the following most resemble?
         : ${(A)=a::=$(uname -a)}
   a. A concise diagram of a Norman castle.
   b. An indifferent attempt to record Mandarin inflections in ASCII.
   c. An array assignment, of course, stands to reason.

7. We would like your opinion on the following proposals for new
   modules.

   a. zcaffe`: real Italian coffee while you are typing; options for
      lungo and stretto, senza/extra zucchero; dynamic selection of
      milk frothiness and amount of sprinkled chocolate for
      cappuccino; professional version makes orders directly with
      Lavazza and starts up your Vespa outside while you are paying.

   b. zwin: commands must be selected from lists of icons; arguments
      must be entered one at a time in a dialogue box available from
      the `Enter New Argument' entry of the `Argument' submenu of the
      `Command' menu; job control and redirection has been removed,
      that's too difficult, you don't want to know about it; parameter
      substitution was too old-fashioned; scripts don't work any more,
      since they don't have pictures in --- I mean, you can't click on
      an if-block, so what's the point?

   c. zscores: find out the latest sports scores before each prompt;
      the sport in question is determined from your domain,
      e.g. hockey (.ca), football (.uk), football (.de), football
      (.it), football (.fr), football (.br); configuration options to
      resolve conflicts between local sports teams e.g. reds/blues
      (.liv.ac.uk, .livjm.ac.uk), City/Utd (.man.ac.uk),
      Rangers/Celtic (.gla.ac.uk), Hearts/Hibs (.ed.ac.uk),
      Toon/Makkem (***).

(***) please don't worry what this mean outside North-East England.
      (actually, please don't worry there, either.)


Buone Feste
pws
-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>       Tel: +39 050 844536
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/
Dipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarroti 2, 56127 Pisa, Italy