Re: Questions

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Would anyone object if I applied the patch below to make newlines in
> strings in the job text be output as spaces (keeping the `jobs' output 
> better readable)?

It's a good idea to keep the job text on one line for any kind of automated
use, too.

> And did anyone have the time to try the patch for scrolling completion 
> lists? (I have a new version which is faster and allows status lines --
> it's getting silly ;-)

It seems fine.  The natural way of showing that text is missing would be to
put an ellipsis (`...' in English) at the top or bottom, like it does when
a line is too long.  It's most confusing when you wrap around the bottom
without warning.  A scroll-step style would certainly be useful, and in the
long run a special keymap.  I have doubts about `return' forcing the
display to scroll a line, since in menu-selection it already has another
meaning (and you have to hit it twice to execute a line, which took me a
long time to get used to), so this may be overloading it too much.

If it reaches something roughly constant soon, it can go into 3.1.7, since
it should be fairly self-contained, but if it's going to be a long project
to get it usable (though a brief test suggests it already is) it can wait.
Ideally we'd like it so that at least the basics of the user interface are
in place, so that it doesn't change too much next time (which may well be
4.0.1).

I don't see that it has to be that much more sophisticated.  I'm against
implementing a rewrite of `less' in the shell, at least unless it goes into
a completely self-contained library.

I tried this on the /etc directory, and was a bit worried when the first
thing that showed up was `\M-,'.  But ls confirms that there really is a
file of that name there.  Weird.  Hope I'm not giving away a commercial
secret.

Would people rejoice or complain if we had this on by default (other
settings permitting)?

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cambridge Silicon Radio, Unit 300, Science Park, Milton Road,
Cambridge, CB4 0XL, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 392070