Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!SHAMASH.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU!mouse
From: mouse@SHAMASH.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Tektronix emulation (was Re: X11R4 xterm on RS/6000)
Message-ID: <9008231814.AA00907@shamash.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 23 Aug 90 18:14:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 42

>>>> ... IBM junk ...
>>> [I]t would be nice to know why you think it's "junk"
>> And when we point out, for instance, that the C compiler is brain
>> damaged because its error messages [are verbose and break
>> previously-working parsing code]

I once had the chance to try to use a machine whose compiler's
complaints were verbose multiline monstrosities like the ones I assume
you're complaining about.  I do not recall whose machine it was.

> I don't agree, however, with the above comments.  More computer
> manufacturers deliver these kind of C compilers (not Bull by the
> way).  It is a more user friendly, stricter syntax checking,
> compiler, especially for the novice user.  Nothing can be against
> that.

I have nothing against stricter checking in the compiler.  What I
objected (and object) to is overly verbose messages.

Even that would be acceptable provided it's just a default which can be
changed.  On the system I used, I found no hint that there was any way
to get reasonably terse complaint messages.  I do not need five lines
per complaint; I do not *want* five lines per complaint.  If there were
something I could do, an environment variable, even a compiler flag, to
get one-line complaints after the style of the BSD compiler, this would
satisfy me.  If I had been going to work with the system I tried for
very long, I would have written a wrapper to filter the garbage out of
the complaints and preserve just the useful information.

What's wrong with verbose complaints?  (For me, that is.)  Primarily,
they scroll by too fast.  I slip up once in my program and I can't
(couldn't) hit ^C fast enough to keep the first complaint - the one
that starts the floodgating - from being scrolled off the screen by the
rest of them.  (If I had had emacs working on the machine it would have
helped, but only somewhat.  Not enough.)

Enough of this in an X forum anyway.

					der Mouse

			old: mcgill-vision!mouse
			new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu