On Wed, 5 Jul 2023 10:04:47 -0500
Dave Blanchard <d...@killthe.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:01:43 +1200
> Miles Rout <mi...@rout.nz> wrote:
> 
> > There is a page on the website advertising all the many patches available 
> > to improve st and dwm.
> >  Few if any other software projects provide that these days, and are 
> > offended by forks.  
> 
> Actually few if any other software projects NEED to be patched to provide 
> basic ass functionality, like you know, SCROLLBACK BUFFERS IN A TERMINAL. 
> That patch is an absolute joke, BTW--again, it calls malloc() for EVERY LINE 
> of the scrollback buffer! It takes like a second just to open the terminal 
> with a large scrollback buffer, vs sanely-designed Xterm which starts 
> instantly!

One malloc per line isn't really something to lost any sleep over. And you 
don't necessarily need scrollback in your terminal — most terminals, including 
st, do not support splitting to open new terminals, which is an even more 
important functionally that you don't need your terminal to implement either: 
tmux and similar software can provide this, and you can make your terminal run 
tmux automatically. And if the machine isn't used interactively, if it's just a 
monitor displaying information (surf is commonly used to display Jenkins and 
similar software), you definitely do not need this. Only having the absolute 
basics and that patch in those things you personally need is quite nice. And if 
you want to fork the software, or just study it to understand how the different 
functionalities are implemented, it's unbeatable. I personally do not have any 
patches applied to any suckless software, and it works just fine for me. A lot 
of popular terminals, and st's patches, implement a bunch of features  that I 
really don't have any interest, and sometimes, I don't even think they belong 
in a terminal emulator, or any software running in it, at all.

> 
> There's also few software packages out there (in the sane real world) that 
> actually require you to EDIT THE SOURCE CODE AND RECOMPILE just to change 
> basic options!
> 
> Want to use a different font in different terminals for different purposes? 
> Sorry, st doesn't support that feature, or ANY other features, AT ALL, unless 
> you personally write a patch to do it. Garbage.
> 
> >  The suckless philosophy embraces forks and patches:   
> 
> Bzzt--WRONG. I suggested a fork of st on this list one time and was violently 
> assaulted as if I was the enemy of mankind. 
> 
> That is the real world. You are living in a delusional fantasy.
> 
> > Ok this is obviously just contrarian trolling,
> >  nobody who has read xterm's source code
> >  thinks it is any good.  
> 
> I read Xterm's source code, and I use it daily. It's my most used application 
> by far. I KNOW that it is good. It beats the brakes off the useless, 
> featureless piece of trash that is ST.
> 


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