Re: setopt interactivecomments

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 04/16/2014 10:37 AM, shawn wilson wrote:
>
> It's disabled because it always has been, and therefore enabling it might
> break longstanding usage.
> ...
>
My adoption of Linux was set back about ten years by this sort of 
thinking.  The first time I ever succeeded in get a Linux to boot 
(Slackware I think it was in the mid 90's) I'm at a command line with no 
command recall, no nuthin' really, and even the bleeding backspace key 
does not work.  I'm expected to work with that.  "This is Linux?" I asks 
myself after a few hours of suffering, and run back to DOS, where I had 
become accustomed to the sweet, sublime perfection of the 4DOS shell.  
When I tried Linux again, I had benefit of some friends who explained to 
me that it was 'nix tradition that things be made as difficult as 
possible for the beginner, and that the shells especially, as they come 
out of the box, are particularly sadistically crippled, and 
*deliberately* so.

It was shown to me how to get the backspace key working and how to get 
the shell at least functioning up to half the level of command.com in 
DOS. Of course after some of the obligatory purgatory of getting to know 
a few things I now know that the shells (particularly zsh) have an 
almost unbelievable power if you get the incantations right.  (Tho  I 
think 4DOS spoiled me forever with it's combination of power, 
simplicity, consistency, transparency and intuitiveness. Learning new 
things in 4DOS was so easy that you could almost do it in your sleep, 
that's why I'm always bitchin' now ;-)

It was longstanding usage that we write with goose quill on parchment.  
Let's forget about longstanding usage, break with all tradition, and 
have zsh, as she comes out of the box, show folks what she can do.  
Let's enable all the stuff that almost everyone is almost sure to want 
anyway.  Let's even be so bold as to have the backspace key working by 
default!  Of course there should always be a 'longstanding usage' 
version for folks who still use a VT100 and teletype connected to a 
steam powered mainframe, but for the rest of us, I'd say the backspace 
key is here to stay.