[ILUG] bloody redhat!!

[kevin lyda]

Paul Jakma wrote:
> My main problem is really with the scripts in RedHat. They are huge
> messy bird's nests. Seriously, install a printer with printtool then
> go and read the filter script in var/spool/lpd/../. It's disgusting,
> especially considering that it's job is just to decide which REAL
> filter to hand off to!

which isn't easy to do with a shell script!  it's designed, iirc, to
look through it's list of .fpi files and construct a "path" from the
current type to the output type based on the available filters (the
names of the files give the conversions).  so if people wanted to add
more conversions they could just write additional .fpi files (which are
trivial themselves - most are one liners).

perhaps writing it in perl would be more clear?  even as a shell script
though it's actually quite well written - i've seen much worse!

> Does anyone remember the "Something Level" window manager M4 setup
> script hell from RH4? It was nearly impossible to debug, epitome of
> how not to do a maintainable/debugable set of scripts. And RH havn't
> learned.

actually, afaik that was "Another Level" and was the result of a
competition.  So while redhat picked it, they didn't write it.

> Again, printcap is fine. And again, my old RH4 based print filters
> were fine aswell. Short, sweat and understandable with the minimum of
> effort. Now look at the RH6.1 filters.

er...  here's a diff between the 6.1 and 4.2 version of the script in
question.

% diff /usr/lib/rhs/rhs-printfilters/master-filter master-filter   
215,216c215
< # troff is safe again with groff-1.11a or later we hope
<         "troff or preprocessor"* )
---
>         "troff or preprocessor"* )					      
359,360d357
<     elif [ "$PRINTER_TYPE" = "NCP" ]; then
<        bestpath="$bestpath | ${FPIDIR}/ncpprint ${SPOOLDIR}/acct"

3 additional lines?  377 lines is short, 380 is a tangle of complexity?

> What i really want is Tru64 Linux. :)

you won't get it.  linux supports too many devices.  it's the same
reason why mac os for intel would be annoyingly complex.

kevin
-- 
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