Hey Chet, Thanks for getting back so fast. Just a couple points to make.
On Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 4:38 PM Chet Ramey <chet.ra...@case.edu> wrote: > > On 9/11/24 3:19 PM, John Devin wrote: > > While hunting down some problems on a terminal, I ran across the > > option 'prefer-visible-bell'. It took me some time looking into this > > before finding out it was deprecated in favor of 'bell-style' about 20 > > years ago, per: > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2016-02/msg00186.html. > > As the last line in that message says, it was never documented. Readline > didn't really even have documentation until version 2.1 in 1997, well > after bell-style. > > > > > Despite that, it still shows up in stackoverflow answers and reddit > > threads even from as recently as six months ago: > > https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/1b55k9f/that_stupid_bell/kt3l0hm/. > > > > Could this option be documented in the man page? > > As you said, it's been deprecated -- and undocumented -- for over 30 years > (and remains only for backwards compatibility). There's no reason to > document it. > I understand it's been superseded, but I do want to point this out: running `bind -v` in bash 5.2.21 right now still lists 'set prefer-visible-bell on' in its output. I considered that maybe it would only do this in response to being set directly, but neither ~/.bashrc nor /etc/bash.bashrc on my system include it, nor any other file I can find. Unless this has been changed between that version and now, it means bash is currently reporting a variable with no way to discover what it means or what its effects are without changing it and testing. > > It would have saved > > me a bit of wasted time, and it would give me a resource to point to > > (other than an old mailing list thread) to authoritatively state it's > > been superseded. > > It's been superseded. It's not just undocumented; it's not supposed to be > used. But there was no reason to break users' startup files, and that is > still true. > > (Yes, I would have hoped usage would have dried up, but change is hard.) > The fact that its usage continues suggests documenting it as deprecated would be beneficial. Many of the stackoverflow/reddit/etc discussions I found while looking into this included people using both 'bell-style' and 'prefer-visual-bell' simply because they didn't know what one meant, and then keeping both in their config once they found the combination that did what they wanted. Essentially, I think it's being cargo-culted. The fact that `bind -v` still reports it certainly doesn't help. As a comparison, I would like to point out that 'meta-flag' (which `bind -v` also reports) is still documented as a synonym for 'input-meta' even though it appears that replacement also happened around the same time as 'bell-style', ie pre-bash 2.0. > > Additionally, as discussed in the mail link above, I think the > > 'convert-meta' and 'input-meta' need slightly more description. For > > example, is this statement accurate: "The convert-meta variable has no > > effect if input-meta is off." From the manpage I would think so, but > > I'm just not confident. I also can't tell conclusively whether the > > output-meta variable is affected by convert-meta, or vice-versa. > > Those descriptions have undergone fairly significant changes, the result > of this thread: > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-readline/2024-08/msg00003.html > Aw, I see. Thanks for the link. - John
