cr, lf, and reading in terminals/vim

[Brian Milby]

My suggestion is to just bite the bullet and build LC where 'file' exports
using LF on Mac.  The change required is literally a couple of characters
in one file (maybe two files to include the server default, but you can
already change it there on demand).  Leave the constants as they are (LF).
It could be announced as something for 9.6 to give the community time to
test.  The only way it would be a problem is if you were exporting a text
file on a Mac that was going to be consumed by a program that depended on
CR line endings.

Since LC consumes all 3 formats equally well, it would be no issue on the
read side.

Internally the concern is the build tools/environment.  I've built LC with
it changed (actually submitted it as part of a PR, but had to reverse it)
before 9 was GM.  It passed the automated tests when I did it.

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 10:28 PM Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> Brian Milby wrote:
>
>  > The reason for the difficulty is that internally LC uses LF as the
>  > line ending.  The cr, lf, and return constants all actually map to LF.
>  > When you write a text file, LC will convert line endings to the native
>  > format.  So for Windows you get CRLF, Linux gets LF, and Mac gets CR.
>  > I take issue with this because as of OS X the native line ending for
>  > the OS is actually now LF...
>
> Agreed.
>
> The hard question is: What shall we do about it?
>
> On the one hand, we have millions of lines of code in our community that
> use CR, and a certain percentage of those are dependent on CR having a
> specific value (even if that value is inconsistent with the true ASCII
> value).
>
> On the other hand, we have a constant that suggests it's one thing when
> it's really something else, and at this point that design decision
> benefits no one and confuses many.
>
> Favor backward compatibility, or language learnability/usability?
>
> --
>   Richard Gaskin
>   Fourth World Systems
>   Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>   ____________________________________________________________________
>   Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
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