From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from gatech.edu (gatech.edu [130.207.244.244]) by werple.net.au (8.7/8.7.1) with SMTP id RAA17356 for ; Thu, 26 Oct 1995 17:33:32 +1000 (EST) Received: from euclid (euclid.skiles.gatech.edu) by gatech.edu with SMTP id AA27548 (5.65c/Gatech-10.0-IDA for ); Thu, 26 Oct 1995 03:30:51 -0400 Received: by euclid (5.x/SMI-SVR4) id AA17532; Thu, 26 Oct 1995 03:28:20 -0400 Resent-Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 03:25:39 -0400 Old-Return-Path: Message-Id: <9510260725.AA23682@redwood> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.4 10/10/95 To: zsh-workers@euclid.math.gatech.edu Subject: Re: ZSH's future In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Oct 1995 00:26:20 MDT." <9510260626.AA26444@bjerknes.cdc.noaa.gov> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 03:25:39 -0400 From: Richard Coleman Resent-Message-Id: <"3VZbi.0.pH4.JYpZm"@euclid> Resent-From: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/494 X-Loop: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: zsh-workers-request@math.gatech.edu > I know, I hate these vague and open-ended subject lines, too. This is > not really related to zsh development either. So feel free to quit > reading, if you've even gotten this far... Well, it's been a while since we had a `future of zsh' discussion, so I'll jump in. > How do the people actively involved in ZSH development think zsh > compares with ksh93? (Windows95, ksh93. Yuck. What's the world coming > to? ;-) > > But I'm wondering if people will start flocking to ksh93 (now that it > appears to be easier to get a hold of), and the incentive and impetus > for actively developing zsh will wane such that zsh will be more of a > "hobby" than it already is. As long as we enjoy using and developing zsh, it doesn't really matter what everyone else does, but I predict the use of zsh will rise rather than fall in the future. We've made some really good progress since zsh-2.5.03 and I think things will continue to get better. Also, considering the number of hours I've been devoting to zsh, I believe it's gone way beyond a hobby for me :-) > I think zsh's niche is being king of the interactive features and > conveniences. Perhaps that should be stressed more in the ZSH WWW > pages? I think this is the key point. From an interactive standpoint, zsh is the most `natural' feeling shell I've used. In particular, zsh's completion facilities, csh-style history mechanisms, and extended globbing facilities make it much better at interactive use than ksh. Ksh (especially with the new features) is probably better for heavy-duty scripts, but since Perl is widely available, I don't think this is such a big deal. This is not to say that we won't add any of these features to zsh. We will probably add some of these at some time in the future. But if we add any of them, it should be because it is generally useful and not just because ksh has it. I agree that we would stress the interactive facilities of zsh in the documentation and web pages. I've been thinking about adding such wording to the man pages, but couldn't decide exactly what to say. Richard Coleman coleman@math.gatech.edu