Subject:
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Re: Backwards Compatibility (Was Calling all Meta-commands)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Sun, 16 Mar 2003 06:22:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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2069 times
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In lugnet.cad.dev, Tim Courtney writes:
> In lugnet.cad.dev, Travis Cobbs writes:
> > Here is my suggestion (just a suggestion, mind you). All future
> > meta-commands could look like the following:
> >
> > 0 {META} <command> [arguments]
> >
> > Where the "0 {META} " signifies a meta-command (the spaces are both
> > required, but can be repeated), <command> is whatever the name of your
> > meta-command is, and [arguments] is the optional list of arguments. Example
> > (re-do of MPD commands):
> >
> > 0 {META} MPD-FILE <filename>
> > 0 {META} NOFILE
>
> A valid suggestion - but are the braces necessary? Perhaps just the word META.
The main reason I suggested the braces is that they make it basically
impossible for the text to show up at the beginning of a standard comment
line. In this case, they're probably unnecessary, since META isn't exactly
a common word.
> Another suggestion Kevin kicked around with me (and I mentioned it to Steve,
> I forget his rection though), was introducing a new line type specifically
> for meta-commands. Thoughts on that?
Well, I don't know about other programs, but LDView will throw them in the
error log, but otherwise ignore them. It would be really easy for me to add
support for the new type and not throw them in the error log, though.
One downside of a new line type is that I think we would need to wait for
fairly wide-spread tool support of the new line type before we could
reasonably make it "official".
> One thing I'm concerned about is making it easy for people to hand-edit
> files. IMO, the less text someone has to type in, the better. So, a new line
> type would be efficient for that (but it could be an inconvenience in
> another area, I don't know). OR -- shorter identifiers could be used with
> line type 0, or at least no special characters. It's a bit more laborious to
> type in
>
> 0 {FIELD} blah...
>
> than it is to type
>
> 0 FIELD blah...
Once again, my rationale was to avoid having it show up in a comment that
wasn't meant to be a field-specifier. While probably highly unlikely, I
suppose FIELD could show up at the beginning of a standard comment line.
Come to think of it, the above {META} is somewhat unnecessary. If we're
going to use braces, then the mere presense of the braces could indicate a
meta-statement. i.e.:
0 {MPD-FILE} <filename>
0 {NOFILE}
0 {FIELD} Author: Travis Cobbs
If non-programmers think the braces make it too difficult to enter by hand,
I'm comfortable with not having them, and just using 0 META to specify
meta-commands.
> Nevertheless - I do think RIGHT NOW the focus should be on documenting what
> we have, per Kevin's goals, and LATER we should worry about the future of
> meta-commands. One thing at a time.
This seems reasonable. However, news threads (including this branch of this
one) can't really easily be put on hold.
--Travis Cobbs (tcobbs@REMOVE.halibut.com)
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