[Surfraw-devel] Re: About surfraw! ;-)

[Kevin Kreamer]

Thomas Smith <tgs@resc.net> writes:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for poking me.  I've applied your patch, minus the naughty bits, I'm 
> about to check that into CVS, and I will upload later tonight if nobody 
> shouts about CVS being broken or anything.
>
> I'd like to add that the decision to use sensible-browser rather than a 
> build-time-chosen browser was brilliant, and I'd like to commend you for 
> it :-)

Why, thank you. :-)

> I had an idea which would eliminate all my objections.  I think that the 
> surfraw program should be able to change a user's .bashrc/.cshrc/whatever so 
> that the surfraw binary directory is part of their path.  Like, when you run 
> "surfraw", it maybe tells you the elvi as it currently does, and then says 
> something like
>
> TO USE SURFRAW: run "sr <elvis-name> <search terms>"
> OR run "surfraw --update-rc-files" to add the elvi to your $PATH.
>
> Does this seem reasonable?  Adding the change should be easy, just appending a 
> line or two to the end of the correct dotfile.

I'm not really for it.  Keep in mind our audience.  This program is
used by people who want to stay at a command prompt as much as
possible.  Setting their $PATH is generally trivial for them, and they
generally don't want random programs messing with their dotfiles.
More importantly, it still doesn't really solve the problem, because
while surfraw and rhyme (for instance) will no longer conflict in the
Debian package sense, they will still continue to conflict as far as
use goes.  Let's say I install surfraw and rhyme both, and do the
--update-rc-files bit.  When I type 'rhyme' into my command prompt,
which program runs?  How are you going to explain why the other
doesn't to a person who doesn't understand enough about their $PATH to
set it? 

I submit that the surfraw elvi need their own namespace, not just
their own directory.  This can be done in two ways: 1) make them
arguments to some command (so far, it seems 'sr' is the best choice
there), or 2) rename them all to something reasonably unique (like
prepending them with 'sr').  As I said before, these choices aren't
mutually exclusive, and if we do either, the problem goes away.

> On an unrelated note, do you suppose CVS commit messages are sent to this 
> list?  They probably won't be too high volume, should I set that up if it 
> isn't already that way?

I'm pretty sure they are not right now.  I'd say to go ahead and set
it up to do so... if it turns out badly, we can always turn them back
off. :-)

Thanks,
Kevin