grumble about GNU info

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Kyle O'Donnell <kyleodonnell-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| unalias ls ?

Sure.  Or type /bin/ls.

| From: Chris F.A. Johnson <cfaj-uVmiyxGBW52XDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org>

| > As is too often the case, the ls(1) manpage is incomplete.  It does not
| > describe the environment variable LS_COLORS (it should).  ls(1) says
| > the full documentation is in texinfo.
| 
|     My ls man page does mention LS_COLORS and refers the reader to the
|     dircolors command.

Right.  I wasn't clear.  ls(1) does mention LS_COLORS but does not
describe it.  Neither does dircolors(1).

|     However, that is probably not the problem, and the problem will
|     not be obvious from any man page. Some distros have the stupid
|     practice of setting aliases for some standard commands;
|     "ls ==color=auto" is one of the commonn ones. To prevent this I
|     always put "unalias -a" at the top of my .bashrc file.

I try to keep my customization to a minimum.  I find that it is like a
ball and chain that I have to drag around from system to system.
But I always do some.

The alias on Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.10 seems to be "ls --color=tty".
Another undocumented setting.  Grunt.

On Fedora 9, the colorization does not happen in the case that annoys
me but it does on Ubuntu 8.10.  The case is inside my text editor: it
provides a fake terminal, inside a window, for running shell commands.

The $TERM setting is "vanilla" on Fedora and "dumb" on Ubuntu (at one
time these were reasonable).

On Fedora:
    $ echo $TERM
    vanilla
    $ typeset -p TERM
    declare -x TERM="vanilla"
    $ infocmp -L
    infocmp: couldn't open terminfo file /lib/terminfo/v/vanilla.
    $ TERM=dumb infocmp -L
    # Reconstructed via infocmp from file: /usr/share/terminfo/d/dumb
    dumb|80-column dumb tty,
	    auto_right_margin,
	    columns#80,
	    bell=^G, carriage_return=^M, cursor_down=^J,
	    scroll_forward=^J,
    $ 


On Ubuntu, I get a result that surprises me.

    $ echo $TERM
    dumb
    $ typeset -p TERM
    declare -- TERM="dumb"
    $ infocmp -L
    infocmp: environment variable TERM not set
    $ TERM=dumb infocmp -L
    #       Reconstructed via infocmp from file: /lib/terminfo/d/dumb
    dumb|80-column dumb tty,
	    auto_right_margin,
	    columns#80,
	    bell=^G, carriage_return=^M, cursor_down=^J,
	    scroll_forward=^J,
    $

How did TERM get set to be unexported?  From looking at an strace, it
seems that JOVE has been compiled to not export TERM to the shell.  (I
built JOVE for Fedora (for myself) but someone else builds it for Ubuntu.)

In any case, exporting TERM=dumb does not fix ls on Ubuntu.  Nor does
making TERM "vanilla".

|     I've never tried pinfo, but info is a PITA!

pinfo is slightly less of a PITA.  Nothing can fix the crappy texinfo
data, but the keystrokes are a little more familiar.  KDE's help
system (whatever it is called) has a still better GUI.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists