[OS X TeX] Recent allegations about tcsh
Gary L. Gray
gray at psu.edu
Thu Sep 12 00:50:40 CEST 2002
Jordan K. Hubbard of Apple asked me to post this to the list for him.
==============================
I'm not sure why this discussion is occurring on a mailing list about
*TeX*, but just to address some of the misconceptions recently
expressed about the tcsh defaults, I thought I'd make a few points:
1. The default behavior of tcsh is now the *default* behavior, which is
to say that tcsh behaves under Mac OS X 10.2 as it does on every other
Unix system which ships tcsh. Depending on customizations in any
scripts you may write or even in documentation you may provide to
end-users is a real mistake since it only results in confusion when
those scripts or procedures are attempted on another Unix system. This
is one of the reasons that tcsh was "stripped down" to its defaults
again in the standard configuration, it then being a deliberate act on
the user's part if they want to change those defaults and hopefully
something which will stick better in that user's memory.
It's sort of like remapping your keyboard to a dvorak layout. Sure,
there are a lot of people who say that's a superior layout and that
there's a huge body of evidence to support the assertion that the
qwerty layout is rather deliberately sub-optimal, but would you ship an
OS with the default keyboard map set to dvorak? No, you set the
default behavior according to the most common denominator for what
people assume it's going to be, and there are probably just as many
"Linux switchers" using Mac OS X now as there are people who jumped
aboard with 10.[01] and upgraded to 10.2, so it's even hard to argue
that the "weight of assumption" falls clearly on the side of the
previous default behavior. In any case, it's easy to restore that
default behavior for those people who liked it, and that brings us to
our next point.
2. We ship /etc/csh.* essentially "empty" as it is, so whether you
source the old defaults in from /etc/csh.login or $HOME/.login, you're
going to get the same behavior. If you've already added a bunch of
customizations of your own to either /etc/csh.* or $HOME/.login then
you're clearly a power user and you don't WANT to blindly suck in the
old defaults anyway given that they'll potentially conflict with your
own settings (no matter where you source them from). You'll want to
read through the examples (which is why we called them "examples") and
pick and choose the bits you like best, just as you probably did back
when you came up with your original .login contents by looking over
your buddy's shoulder (so to speak) and stealing bits you liked best
from his or her defaults.
It's widely held that the only .login file written completely from
scratch was probably Ken Thomson's, everyone else having derived theirs
from someone else's and then customized it to their own tastes. This
is only right, and where Fred Sanchez got it wrong was in making his
*personal* defaults the system-wide defaults, which is a real no-no
from a Unix perspective. Some of us like Fred's choices and some of us
don't, my group at Apple probably receiving an equal number of flames
and praise for the previous set of "defaults", and since individual
preferences are as varied as their individual genetic codes, the right
thing to have done from the start would probably have been to canvas
the Unix community for 5 or 6 different "interesting user profiles" and
provided them as examples for reference, not exhibiting any preference
for one over the other.
In any case, Gerben has made the situation sound far more apocalyptic
and dire than it really is, and the fact of the matter is that if
you're a naive user who will never customize your settings further but
like being Fred Sanchez, you can simply follow the README letter for
letter and nothing bad will happen to you beyond bearing a sudden
uncomfortable resemblance to Fred. If you're a power user, you don't
NEED to blindly follow in Fred's footsteps since you'll undoubtedly
derive a lot more value from simply reading through his examples and
incorporating those bits you like by hand, undoubtedly laughing and
shaking your head at the rest. Which is as it should be.
--
Jordan K. Hubbard
Engineering Manager, BSD technology group
Apple Computer
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