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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Is replacing /bin/sh with bash recommended?
Date: 28 Mar 1996 17:36:07 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <4jeim7$cde@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <4ih5qb$lae@blackice.winternet.com> <4ik5p6$qm6@helena.mt.net> <DoJrqo.6F9@twwells.com> <4j0sto$scs@calypso.bns.com.au> <4j4fmh$5e8@uriah.heep.sax.de> <4j8ops$pfo@calypso.bns.com.au>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com
mike@calypso.bns.com.au (Michael Talbot-Wilson) wrote:
]
] j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) writes:
] >For most of us, colorized ls's are useless toys. Those who like it
] >can grab two of them out of the ports collection (the Linux one, and
] >yet another one).
]
] Who are we, that for most of us this is true? An ever-diminishing
] band of hair-shirted purists, rejoicing in our rejection of
] ease-of-use features, deriving our self-esteem from our exclusiveness,
] preciousness, intellectual hypertrophy, and rarity? What kick do you
] get out of this, Joerg?
]
] Recently I have been using Linux nearly as often at a Wyse 50 terminal
] as at a system console. At the latter I see colour, at the former I
] do not. I don't know or care why, but I don't see outlandish effects
] on the terminal due to colour being enabled in my account. What is there
] to disagree with?
]
] Try it. Acquire the capacity to judge whether or not it is a useless
] toy.
Colorized semantic constructs in an editor have their place.
The output of the ls is not semantically associative, it is
alphabetically associative.
Colorized ls, I find seriously distracting. The color is to
draw your eyes to what is nominally important to the mythical
"average user". This works. And draws my eyes away from the
important stuff.
Since I have ASCII hardwired into my brain, I can visually
search a sorted list (which is what ls puts out) a hell of a
lot faster if it's *not* color.
To a lesser extent, one would expect all English speakers, and
indeed, all educated people with small (fits in 8 bits) alphabets
to have their local collation sequence "hard wired". If they
don't, I'd certainly not hire them for any job involving a
dictionary or a phone book.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.