Subject: Re: CRLF fun stuff again...
From: Duncan Sinclair (sinclair@dis.strath.ac.uk)
Date: Sat Feb 03 2001 - 07:08:28 EST
Hi Folks,
I wrote:
>Until now, every time I mention this problem, people tell me that I
>shouldn't want to do cr/lf translation, and it's an ugly hack. My reply
>is that it is necessary for cross platform file manipulation, and I
>really, actually, want it, thank you very much.
Donald Lee writes:
>If I may add my two cents, I think it's a bad idea for the filesystem to
>effectively blindly fondle and convert the data. There are plenty of tools
>out there, like bbedit, that handle text files regardless of how their
>line endings are done.
>
>The downside of a problem with the CR/LF "feature" is irretrievably corrupted
>data. What you get for this is arguably a minor "convenience".
>
>I think it's a bad trade.
>
>I keep it turned off, and recommend this to all who ask.
This is the sort of thing I mean. I know that BBEdit handles Unix
files transparently. That's not what I'm interested in. I want to
edit Mac-produced files on the Unix end. Vi doesn't "do" Mac-style
line endings. Nor does any other unix utility. Nor should they.
Typical example... I have users that edit HTML pages using their
favourite HTML editor and then copy their pages to my server. I later
may want to edit their pages from my Sun. I first have to do the cr/lf
conversion myself. I wouldn't have to do this if the cr/lf translation
worked properly.
If the cr/lf translation is done right there is _no_ corruption of
data, unless you try to do silly thing like edit binary files with
a text editor - a guarenteed way of corrupting data without any help
from the filesystem.
[ A correctly configured netatalk setup only does cr/lf translation on
Mac-produced TEXT files, and Unix-created files that by their
extension are recognised as text by netatalk. You should not configure
netatalk to assume that unix files are text when it doesn't have a
recognised extension. ]
If you don't want to use the cr/lf translation, then don't, but while
the feature exists in netatalk, it would be nice if it actually worked.
Cheers,
Duncan.
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