On Sat, 26 Oct 1996 14:36:23 -0700, Jason Thorpe  
<thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> mumbled:
> On Sat, 26 Oct 1996 14:34:58 -0700 (PDT)
> Jeremy Cooper <jeremy@broder.com> wrote:
>
>  > Why not check it stdout is a tty? If not, default to the old
>  > style output.
>
> On the surface, that seems like a good idea... however, consider
> the case of the dailies... you might want them to look pretty
> there, but there's not a tty associated with that process when they
> go off.
>
> I'm inclined to say "Pretty by default, add a flag to specify
> one-row output."

Hmpf.  I don't like the idea of beautifying by default.  That means  
that all scripts have to be modified that rely on single row output  
etc etc etc.  And besides, once we kick this snowball off, where  
does it stop?

I'm inclined to say "Ugly by default, add a flag to specify  
beautified output".

I'd rather have a user who cannot stand UNIX's uglyness to set an  
environment variable of some sort if that's what they want.  Or, a  
la 'ls', make them explicitly force beautification.  Have them alias  
their df if that's what they want.

Leave it as it is, or add an explicit option to change the default  
behavior.  Or, let's see, does POSIX address this issue?  If so,  
let's go with whatever POSIX says.

Why does an OS have to be pretty?  It's not like a beautified df  
makes the OS run better ;-).

Regards,
Chris

---
Christian Kuhtz <kuhtz@ix.netcom.com>, office: ckuhtz@paranet.com
Network/UNIX Specialist for Paranet, Inc. http://www.paranet.com/
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