Re: Good, easy to use, upstream defaults for zsh (i.e. improving usability)

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>]

Keir Mierle wrote:
> Friend: Ok, completion doesn't complete .pdf's for acroread like you
> said it would.
> Me: Go spend hours tweaking your .zshrc.

  autoload -U compinit
  compinit

should do quite enough for new users to get started.  If this needs to
be more prominent in the documentation, suggest where.  Generally
speaking the shell manual is quite long and complex enough, but
restructuring, summarising and cross-referencing to improve clarity is
always possible.

Bart said most things, but I'm quite happy to consider innovative ideas
as to how we can arrange for a useful default configuration without
trashing the system's or the user's zsh initialisation scripts.  This
isn't an easy problem, and I don't think there's anyway of doing it
without at least some connivance from system administrators and package
maintainers.

I don't think there's any future at all in having shell code run by
default when the shell starts (which is what "sensible built-in
defaults" for completion would mean in practice).

One starting point might be zsh-system-install script along the lines
of compinstall to allow /etc/z* to be configured.  `make install'
could finish with the message `type "make system-install" to install
global defaults', or omething.  But someone has to write it.

- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>                  Software Engineer
CSR PLC, Churchill House, Cambridge Business Park, Cowley Road
Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 692070


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