Re: PATCH: _a2ps completion

[Akim Demaille <akim@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi People, I'm the author of a2ps (*Any* to PostScript, not ASCII),
and I'm the one who complained to Clint.  Please, keep me in CC, I'm
not member of the list.

| Clint Adams wrote:
|      
| > I have been informed that a2ps can be just as useful on PostScript
| > files as any other file, and that *.(#i)(ps|eps) should not be
| > excluded from completion.  Perhaps a context-based switch would
| > be more appropriate.
| > ...
| > -_arguments '*:text file:_files -g \*\~\*.\(\#i\)\(ps\|eps\)' -- \
| > +_arguments '*:input file:_files' -- \
|      
| I'm against this change. Very much so. At least in this form.

I'm very much in favor of this.

| I'm very much in favour of the second suggestion because I guess that
| only few people want to use a2ps on postscript files and using
| completion on a prefix where no non-postscript file matches gives one
| postscript files as matches anyway (that's why we use _files, after
| all).

You completely miss the point of using a2ps on PostScript files.
*Many* people do it.  Let me give you a piece of the ANNOUNCE file of
a2ps so that you understand why it'd be a mistake to remove the
completion for PostScript files and *any* other kind of files.

If you want to still remove PostScript files, then this should not be
the default anyway.  People who really know a2ps use *only* a2ps to
print just everything.

Regards,

                    Akim

Description
===========

GNU a2ps is an Any to PostScript filter.  Of course it processes plain
text files, but also pretty prints quite a few popular languages.

Its slogan is precisely `` Do The Right Thing '', which means that
though it is highly configurable, everything was made so that a novice
user can do complicated PostScript manipulations.  For instance, it
has the ability to delegate the processing of some files to other
filters (such as groff, texi2dvi, dvips, gzip etc.), what allows a
uniform treatment (n-up, page selection, duplex etc.) of heterogeneous
files.

As an example:

| $ a2ps mill.1.ps.gz a2ps.gif NEWS a2ps.texi index.html -o demo.ps
| [mill.1.ps.gz (compressed, delegated to Gzip-a2ps): 17 pages on 9 sheets]
| [a2ps.gif (gif, delegated to ImageMagick): 3 pages on 2 sheets]
| [NEWS (plain): 12 pages on 6 sheets]
| [a2ps.texi (texinfo, delegated to texi2dvi): 89 pages on 45 sheets]
| [index.html (html, delegated to Netscape): 13 pages on 7 sheets]
| [Total: 132 pages on 66 sheets] saved into the file `demo.ps'

Want to print a LaTeX file in Duplex?

| $ a2ps paper.tex -s2 -P margot
| [paper.tex (tex, delegated to texi2dvi): 33 pages on 9 sheets]
| request id is margot-129 (standard input)
| [Total: 34 pages on 9 sheets] sent to the printer `margot'

(Bibtex, makeindex, and latex were run as many times as needed.)

Or maybe you want to print the documentation as a booklet?

| $ a2ps -P margot -=book doc/a2ps.texi
| [doc/a2ps.texi (texinfo, delegated to texi2dvi): 109 pages on 109 sheets]
| request id is margot-128 (standard input)
| [Total: 109 pages on 109 sheets] sent to the printer `margot'