Re: Rewrite of zsh-newuser-install

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 8:51 PM dana <dana@dana.is> wrote:
>
> > zstyle ':completion:*' cache-path "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/zcompcache"
> > compinit -d ${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/zcompdump
>
> I actually don't feel strongly about whether we respect XDGBDS or not.

I feel about it a lot like I feel about POSIX compatibility.  Read
into that as you will.

> * How should we handle systems that don't normally use XDGBDS? Should we just
>   force the issue and use it everywhere? Or should we have platform-specific
>   logic to fall back to ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}?

I would recommend ${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME/.cache}} or
similar, now that you mention it.

> * I think the spec says applications should create the directories if they
>   don't exist, right? So shouldn't we `mkdir -pm 0700` them (or the defaults)
>   if necessary?

Thanks for catching that, yes.

> * I like the right-hand prompt and use it myself, but one disadvantage it has
>   is that it makes it annoying to copy and paste from your terminal.

I meant to mention

setopt TRANSIENT_RPROMPT

>   [...] i foresee a possible future where heaps of novice
>   users are including these long irritating strings of white space in their
>   support requests.

That's already a problem for some terminal types, especially when
copy-pasting a completion menu or the like.

> * I do like the idea of encoding the return status in the prompt. I don't feel
>   strongly about whether it's indicated by a colour, a symbol, and/or a
>   number. I'm pretty sure red/green is the most common type of
>   colour-blindness, though, so maybe a colour-only approach is not ideal.

I use reverse-video for this.

> * Whatever we pick for our prompt, should we maybe implement it using the
>   prompt-theme system?

That would make it less "abandonware" as it was previously accused of
being (tho if Debian uses it, it can't be considered completely
abandoned).

> > zstyle ':completion:*:(functions|parameters|users)' ignored-patterns '[[:punct:]]*[[:alnum:]]*'
>
> Not sure about this.

I was a little puzzled by "user names beginning with punctuation" but
let it go at the time.

> > export -T LS_COLORS ls_colors
> > export -T ZLS_COLORS zls_colors=(
>
> Nit-picking, but using export for this initially confused me. You're not
> exporting them (and don't want to). I think you should just use typeset.

Good catch.