<div dir="auto"></div> <div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:49 PM <<a href="mailto:xdg-request@lists.freedesktop.org">xdg-request@lists.freedesktop.org</a>> wrote: </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Send xdg mailing list submissions to <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit <a href="https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg</a> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to <a href="mailto:xdg-request@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg-request@lists.freedesktop.org</a> You can reach the person managing the list at <a href="mailto:xdg-owner@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg-owner@lists.freedesktop.org</a> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of xdg digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg (Elsie Hupp) 2. Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg (Eli Schwartz) 3. Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg (Eli Schwartz) 4. Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg (Elsie Hupp) 5. Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg (Peter White) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2021 15:04:39 -0400 From: Elsie Hupp <<a href="mailto:xdg@elsiehupp.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@elsiehupp.com</a>> To: <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a> Cc: <a href="mailto:conduct@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">conduct@lists.freedesktop.org</a> Subject: Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:18CD0DF0-4D9D-4468-A0D8-EEE335FDFB05@elsiehupp.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">18CD0DF0-4D9D-4468-A0D8-EEE335FDFB05@elsiehupp.com</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Mr. White, You write: > Be that as it may, one should not have to resort to such rather extreme measures just to get sane behaviour back. And please stop drumming for Flatpak. It does have its application but not for this. I mean, come on, more layers of complexity just for this. Plus all the downsides I do not want to discuss here, since they are out of scope Flatpak is a major?and standards-compliant?implementation of XDG_CONFIG_DIRS, alongside GNOME, KDE, etc. And you haven?t actually specified what your use case is; you?ve been consistently vague in a way that allows your text to maintain an unearned tone of righteousness and moral superiority. You write: > Yes, that is very much intentional, those are not ?soft-wrap? but real line breaks. You should read up on mailing list netiquette if this is news to you. Yes, there is an RFC for that, and please don?t go ?fixing? my text. As far as I know RFC 1855 is not part of any accepted email specification?i.e. the ones actually used by the more popular email clients?and several of the behaviors encouraged in it lead to undefined behavior on adaptive devices that did not exist in 1995, such as smartphones. Intentionally using formatting that breaks on the vast majority of computing devices in use is not ?good etiquette?; this behavior is pedantic, condescending, and passive-aggressive, all attributes that directly violate the Freedesktop Community Standards, which are a much more important document than your dusty cultural artifact: > Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include: > > ? Using welcoming and inclusive language > ? Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences > ? Gracefully accepting constructive criticism > ? Focusing on what is best for the community > ? Showing empathy towards other community members If you dislike that the vast majority of the internet has moved on to adaptive text rendering, I suggest you file an RFC about it, or perhaps chain yourself to the front of the Google headquarters. Or, I don?t know, you could use an email client with more normative text rendering? I assume they do, in fact, make ones that work on dialup ANSI terminals. Oh the irony that you?ve expended reams of text complaining about how you don?t like the long-standing XDG folder specification that everyone else seems to accept, right before you turn around and point to an obscure chain letter from the Clinton administration as if it were some sort of inviolable scripture. I?m CCing the conduct committee as a way of *gently encouraging you* to approach this forum in a modicum of good faith. Note: this is all good-faith, constructive criticism of your behavior, not your character. As such I?m sure it should be no great difficulty for you to take it to heart. Sincerely, Elsie Hupp ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2021 17:37:02 -0400 From: Eli Schwartz <<a href="mailto:eschwartz@archlinux.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">eschwartz@archlinux.org</a>> To: <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a> Subject: Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:8a16f39d-9c57-1ae9-6531-dd232cd4ce8e@archlinux.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">8a16f39d-9c57-1ae9-6531-dd232cd4ce8e@archlinux.org</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On 9/20/21 12:03, Peter White wrote: > The way I see it there will be two universes: FHS and a subtly different > XDG Base Dir Spec, which breaks with the former in peculiar subtle ways > and any dev used to the former is in for some surprises, when not > reading carefully. Now, I get that by saying "information" instead of > "files" the authors did not want to limit themselves or the spec to > files, which makes sense, given the elaborations about reading config > files, let aside that it has been done since long before XDG anyways by > shells for example. I think some people would do good by reading and > understanding what was there already before "fixing" things that were > not broken in the first place. This "information" vs. "files" stuff > seems like one of these occasions. > > [...] > > There is no need for a new spec to make this happen since this is > documented in shell manuals which were there from the beginning of time, > UNIX time that is. > > And, need I remind anyone: "Those who do not understand UNIX are > condemned to reinvent it, poorly." -- Henry Spencer > A lot of thought went into it, so one should not go fixing stuff that > was never broken. <a href="http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html</a> Did you say something about the sacred Unix? Who is reinventing what now? -- Eli Schwartz Arch Linux Bug Wrangler and Trusted User -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: OpenPGP_signature Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 833 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <<a href="https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/attachments/20210920/69d711bc/attachment-0001.sig" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/attachments/20210920/69d711bc/attachment-0001.sig</a>> ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2021 17:41:00 -0400 From: Eli Schwartz <<a href="mailto:eschwartz@archlinux.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">eschwartz@archlinux.org</a>> To: <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a> Subject: Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:83f1985f-36b3-8db5-bb96-9c7ad814dcab@archlinux.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">83f1985f-36b3-8db5-bb96-9c7ad814dcab@archlinux.org</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On 9/20/21 15:04, Elsie Hupp wrote: > As far as I know RFC 1855 is not part of any accepted email > specification?i.e. the ones actually used by the more popular email > clients?and several of the behaviors encouraged in it lead to > undefined behavior on adaptive devices that did not exist in 1995, > such as smartphones. > > Intentionally using formatting that breaks on the vast majority of > computing devices in use is not ?good etiquette?; this behavior is > pedantic, condescending, and passive-aggressive, all attributes that > directly violate the Freedesktop Community Standards, which are a > much more important document than your dusty cultural artifact: The fact that smartphone applications are ill designed is not really an indictment on any particular behavior. They also are lead contenders in behavior such as: - adding advertisements for the app you used into your signature - top quoting the entire email thread, recursively Anyway. Your school of thought is in conflict with another school of thought, both schools of thought have wide support in society, and for someone who is so upset at the thought of people acting "pedantic, condescending and passive-aggressive" I find it intriguing that you insult people right back by calling an *extremely* common convention in technical mailing lists, a "dusty cultural artifact" and suggesting that it is malicious behavior. For the record, my cramped smartphone computing device has no problem rendering Peter's excellently well-formatted quotes, but yours are, to me, unreadable. On the other hand, your non-quote content is *mildly* more readable than Peter's hard line wrapping, but not by very much -- both are relatively quite readable. The real issue that basically destroys my ability to parse your replies is the fact that it's essentially impossible to visually distinguish between quotes and original content. The quotes are just a paragraph beginning with a ">" on the first (reflowed) line only. My desktop client converts both of them to indented blockquotes... but perhaps Google / Gmail doesn't have enough funds to pay for developers as talented as the ones Thunderbird has? I genuinely have no idea, this has always been a real puzzler to me. > I?m CCing the conduct committee as a way of *gently encouraging you* > to approach this forum in a modicum of good faith. > > Note: this is all good-faith, constructive criticism of your > behavior, not your character. As such I?m sure it should be no great > difficulty for you to take it to heart. I am sure we are all delighted to know that disagreeing over mailing list etiquette "with intent to make smartphones do worse rendering of the messages" is the point at which you believe it is necessary to summon the code of conduct committee in order to report passive-aggressive condescension. -- Eli Schwartz Arch Linux Bug Wrangler and Trusted User -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: OpenPGP_signature Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 833 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <<a href="https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/attachments/20210920/8aeb6156/attachment-0001.sig" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/attachments/20210920/8aeb6156/attachment-0001.sig</a>> ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2021 18:14:49 -0400 From: Elsie Hupp <<a href="mailto:xdg@elsiehupp.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@elsiehupp.com</a>> To: <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a> Subject: Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:EC7F04BC-5295-4BD3-A81A-376B06DBBBFE@elsiehupp.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">EC7F04BC-5295-4BD3-A81A-376B06DBBBFE@elsiehupp.com</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > I find it intriguing that you insult people > right back by calling an *extremely* common convention in technical > mailing lists, a "dusty cultural artifact" and suggesting that it is > malicious behavior. I?ve been using email for 25+ years. (I have people twice my age and people half my age find my technical generation incomprehensible.) Blockquotes have always been annoying and awful, but they had stopped being a constant thorn in my side until I joined this mailing list. They don?t even seem to be a problem on other mailman mailing lists I?m on. > a ?dusty cultural artifact? Yes, this is a thing called ?shade?. > I am sure we are all delighted to know that disagreeing over mailing > list etiquette "with intent to make smartphones do worse rendering of > the messages" is the point at which you believe it is necessary to > summon the code of conduct committee in order to report > passive-aggressive condescension. Oh, the problem was that that dude took credit for the technical issue and declared it to be righteous and true, all while complaining about a standard nearly as old as the RFC he cited. The irony on top of the irony is that the mangled blockquotes don?t even seem to be his doing; mailman seems to be the one making them terrible for everyone involved. I CC?d the conduct committee so that he wouldn?t respond to me directly. Obviously. Hence the ?gently encouraging?. Conduct committees are there for the purpose of dealing with people you don?t want to deal with yourself, even if nobody has really done anything wrong. This was the third or fourth response where he had been lecturing me personally over nothing at all. Also for some reason John?s responses kept ending up in my spam mailbox, so I had gotten six or so green-ink emails in a row with nothing apparently in between them, and I was kind of suspicious this guy wasn?t going to stop on his own. ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2021 23:49:31 +0000 From: Peter White <<a href="mailto:peter.white@posteo.net" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">peter.white@posteo.net</a>> To: <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a> Subject: Re: XDG_CONFIG_DIRS an /usr/local/etc/xdg Message-ID: <20210920234931.GA123713@Roadrunner> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 05:37:02PM -0400, Eli Schwartz wrote: > On 9/20/21 12:03, Peter White wrote: > > The way I see it there will be two universes: FHS and a subtly different > > XDG Base Dir Spec, which breaks with the former in peculiar subtle ways > > and any dev used to the former is in for some surprises, when not > > reading carefully. Now, I get that by saying "information" instead of > > "files" the authors did not want to limit themselves or the spec to > > files, which makes sense, given the elaborations about reading config > > files, let aside that it has been done since long before XDG anyways by > > shells for example. I think some people would do good by reading and > > understanding what was there already before "fixing" things that were > > not broken in the first place. This "information" vs. "files" stuff > > seems like one of these occasions. > > > > [...] > > > > There is no need for a new spec to make this happen since this is > > documented in shell manuals which were there from the beginning of time, > > UNIX time that is. > > > > And, need I remind anyone: "Those who do not understand UNIX are > > condemned to reinvent it, poorly." -- Henry Spencer > > A lot of thought went into it, so one should not go fixing stuff that > > was never broken. > > > <a href="http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html</a> > > Did you say something about the sacred Unix? Who is reinventing what now? Nice read, the point being? ;) I am not talking about "the split" and /usr/local *is* specified and does make a whole lot of sense in FHS. And that author does not understand what /opt is actually for, but that is very much off-topic, so I won't digress any further. FHS is always a good read, when in doubt. And there never was a need for *another* spec that breaks its override characteristic. At least I fail to see it, and nobody, so far, could provide a good reason for it. If there is need for, say, *additional* data dirs, then specify *those* and do *not* make XDG_DATA_DIRS default to /usr/local/share:/usr/share, since those are already covered by FHS, which differs subtly but very significantly in what happens if files with the same name exist in both, as I tried to point out. FHS: file /usr/local/share/foobar masks /usr/share/foobar, while, XDG mandates to also check /usr/share/foobar for information not present in the former. Same goes for XDG_CONFIG_DIRS: if it weren't for the default (/etc/xdg) all could be just fine. Yes, do encourage anything that is remotely related to desktop software to expect/put the *least* important config file(s) in ${PREFIX}/etc/xdg/<appname>, but leave XDG_CONFIG_DIRS empty with *no* default, the app should just hardcode the expected location at compile time. If the user/admin *then* has additional needs, they can go nuts with XDG_CONFIG_DIRS, for all I care. Again, there is no equivalent env var for the good old ${PREFIX}/etc, because that location is so well known and documented that, for all intents and purposes, it *can* be hardcoded, and that is what non-XDG apps have always done. So, staying in my ealier example, which I want to clarify in (some) more detail here: 1. Read ${PREFIX}/etc/xdg/<appname>/<rcfile(s)>, if it/they exist(s). 2. Read in reverse order, so as to go from least important to most important, files in XDG_CONFIG_HOME, if it is set, move on otherwise. DO NOT DEFAULT to anything. 3. Read XDG_CONFIG_HOME. (Since most important information is read and set last, the condition that it takes precedence is satisfied) This is pretty much what already happens with *any* software I can think of, but shells are very good examples, since they tend to document this very clearly. The *only* addition the spec needs, or needed rather, was XDG_CONFIG_DIRS but not the default. Best, PW ------------------------------ Subject: Digest Footer _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a> <a href="https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg</a> ------------------------------ End of xdg Digest, Vol 206, Issue 11 ************************************ </blockquote></div>