> On 6/13/05, Humberto Massa Guimarăes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > Not necessarily. Just as you have "tableout" as an external > > command (built-in or not) in Monad, you can have a Perl module > > to print things in a tabular manner, expanding the column sizes > > as needed (based on HTML::Format::Table or somesuch) > > But I doubt that'd be as simple as things are now. > As I said in my other answer, things will *never* be simpler as they are right now. Any other stuff will tend to complicate instead of simplify things.
> > Yes, and I withdraw :-) what I said about XML. But *any* > > serialization / deserialization necessary for this scheme to > > work would add (unnecessary) overhead. This and the fact that > > you would create incompatibilities with other Unices ... Those > > are indications that this won't be done. > > What kind of incompatibilities? > There are a lot of scripts today in production use that use the output of ls, ps, in a text-way. If you want to put another command, or another switch to "ls", ok, but the fact that you *can* do it does not mean that you *should* do it. (see below) > > Obviously, some Monad clone can be done with its entire > > toolchain (monad-ls, monad-tableout) ... > > Why not ls --monad? If you want to fork and maintain forever util-linux, I have nothing to say about that. But I *will* leave you (I'm going home from work now) with Occam's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitem. (Things shouldn't be multiplied without necessity) IOW: if it's not broken, don't fix it. -- HTH, Massa
