From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: dired alignment Date: 12 May 2004 13:01:54 -0400 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <200405121549.i4CFnwAu004985@brains.moreideas.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1084382049 13020 80.91.224.253 (12 May 2004 17:14:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 17:14:09 +0000 (UTC) Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Wed May 12 19:14:01 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BNxIv-00047i-00 for ; Wed, 12 May 2004 19:14:01 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BNxIv-00032q-00 for ; Wed, 12 May 2004 19:14:01 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1BNxHT-0006uW-Tl for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Wed, 12 May 2004 13:12:32 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.34) id 1BNxFp-0006U8-9E for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 12 May 2004 13:10:49 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.34) id 1BNxBk-0005FC-UZ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 12 May 2004 13:07:10 -0400 Original-Received: from [132.204.24.67] (helo=mercure.iro.umontreal.ca) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1BNx7K-0003xr-4y; Wed, 12 May 2004 13:02:02 -0400 Original-Received: from asado.iro.umontreal.ca (asado.iro.umontreal.ca [132.204.24.84]) by mercure.iro.umontreal.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38DB7205B5; Wed, 12 May 2004 13:01:55 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: by asado.iro.umontreal.ca (Postfix, from userid 20848) id 0D2088C6AE; Wed, 12 May 2004 13:01:55 -0400 (EDT) Original-To: Peter Whaite In-Reply-To: <200405121549.i4CFnwAu004985@brains.moreideas.ca> Original-Lines: 29 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3.50 X-DIRO-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-DIRO-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-DIRO-MailScanner-SpamCheck: n'est pas un polluriel, SpamAssassin (score=-0.001, requis 5, BAYES_44 -0.00) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:23264 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:23264 >> Do you mean, using --dired should force the old-style alignment? >> That might be a good partial solution. > It was more a coreutils than an emacs comment. It looks like the `ls` > alignment changes were intended to make life easier for interactive > users on a terminal console. However those changes shouldn't have > affected --dired output which is in effect a protocol to communicate > with emacs dired mode. >> However, we will still have problems with non-GNU versions of ls, >> so we might want to make Dired fix the alignment when it doesn't >> use --dired. Note that the problem is more general than that. If a group has a very long name or a file is very large, alignment is lost in the output of old GNU ls whereas it is preserved in the new. I.e. the new alignment in GNU ls breaks alignment betwen different invocations of `ls' but fixes alignment within a single invocation of `ls'. And you can't have it both ways. > That's another problem, though perhaps dired.el should always work with > 'ls -l --dired' output, and that for non-GNU versions of ls, a layer of > elisp filters be added to convert to produce the dired output. IIRC, the --dired flag only indicates whre the file names start/end, which doesn't help much for alignment of other fields. Stefan