This quirk dates back before I started working on dialog in 1999. The gauge widget appeared in dialog 0.6 in 1995 (which in turn was reported based on dialog 0.5 from 1994). I don't believe I have a copy of the 0.5 series.
Some investigation shows that the quirk was first mentioned in 1997
by John Gatewood Ham for dialog 0.6z, and the manpage noted:
.IP "\fB\-\-guage \fItext height width percent\fR"
.RB "A " guage " box displays a meter along the bottom of the box.
The meter indicates the percentage. New percentages are read from
standard input, one integer per line. The meter is updated
to reflect each new percentage. If stdin is XXX, then the first
line following is taken as an integer percentage, then subsequent
lines up to another XXX are used for a new prompt.
The guage exits when EOF is reached on stdin.
However, the code for dialog 0.6c (1995/8/11) has the same quirk.
Ditto dialog 0.6 from Redhat (1995/1/15).
The manpage chunk for Debian's 1999 version did not incorporate that
remark about the "first line following":
.IP "\fB\-\-guage \fItext height width percent\fR"
.RB "A " guage " box displays a meter along the bottom of the box.
The meter indicates the percentage. New percentages are read from
standard input, one integer per line. The meter is updated
to reflect each new percentage. If stdin is XXX, then subsequent
lines up to another XXX are used for a new prompt.
The guage exits when EOF is reached on stdin.
Since this is longstanding behavior of dialog, I'm inclined to document
it, and consider suggestions for adding an option to make it behave
as the documentation implied.
--
Thomas E. Dickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net
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