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

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>]

Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> Peter wrote:
> 
> > One thing that occurs to me is that we need to make it easy for admins
> > to override the defaults.  Hence I think it should look in, say,
> 
> The problem with leaving it to admins to define the defaults is that the
> defaults then vary. A module for installing skeleton startup files isn't
> a bad idea but I think we should then distribute our recommended
> skeletons.

That wasn't the issue: we should certainly distribute our own, otherwise
there's little point in the new module since an administrator can do
everything with the existing global startup files.  The point was that
our defaults would go in a version-specific location, but if an
administrator wanted to override it it's easier to use a fixed location,
so it should search there first.

> The other thing we might consider is changing the default set of options
> that are enabled for interactive shells. autocd is a good candidate
> because it is fairly harmless if you don't know about it. extended_glob
> is perhaps less appropriate because it forces more special characters to
> require quoting. This was done before in early 3.1.x versions if I'm not
> mistaken.
> 
> And before we add any newuser module, what would we actually want to put
> in the default skeleton configuration?

Things like autocd are suitable for this.  It should probably also turn
on completion.  It would be wrong to do very much; for example it
probably ought not to define aliases, certainly not replacements for
common commands which can be both infuriating and dangerous.

-- 
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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