Re: 0.15.5 released -- LINUX5250

"Jason M. Felice" <jasonf@Baldwingroup.COM> writes:

> - xt5250 script rewritten, is more robust.  Inspired by Gomez Henri's xt5250
>   patch for his RPMs.  (Duh, I forgot to include your Gnome icon thing...
>   hmm).  Appending info to your Xdefaults file is no longer necessary.
>   Also, xt5250 now prompts for the system name if not specified, which
>   eliminates one point of confusion.

I've got a few constructive comments on the new xt5250 script.

 - A faster way to do "$(basename 0)" is "${0##*/}".

 - Using "which" like that is at least Linux, and maybe bash-specific.
   The POSIX-compatible way to do that seems to be:

     if command -v dialog >/dev/null 2>&1; then ...

   Alternatively, configure could look for dialog with AC_CHECK_PROGS
   or AC_PATH_PROGS.  Also, Debian has a program called "whiptail"
   which is more likely to be installed than "dialog", but is
   compatible.  I think whiptail is originally from Red Hat, actually.
   configure could see whether either of these exists.

 - "2> /tmp/xt5250.$$" could be a security hole.  If that file is
   actually a symlink to one of the user's files, it will be
   followed.  Something like this should work:

     exec 3>&1
     host=$(dialog ... 2>&1 1>&3)
     if [ "$?" -gt 0 ]; then exit 1; fi
     exec 3>&-

   (Is there a better way to write that if?)

 - An alternative to using xrdb to get the resources is to set
   XUSERFILESEARCHPATH.  For example:

     XUSERFILESEARCHPATH=/usr/share/tn5250/%N
     export XUSERFILESEARCHPATH

   This then leaves everything in the environment the same after it
   exits.  The file should be called XTerm rather than xt5250.keys.

 - The script will split any arguments with embedded spaces, even if
   they're quoted.  (i.e. xt5250 -t "/tmp/log file.txt" won't work.)
   I could work out a fix for this, but not at this time of night.  :-O

> - More of the installtion is automatic - it should now find the 'tic' command
>   and install the 5250 terminfo entry (only if 'uname -s' reports "Linux", and
>   you ran 'make install' as root, tho).

Wouldn't using AC_CANONICAL_HOST and `host_os' be better than using
uname -s?

Because an xterm and the Linux console aren't the same (which is why
dialog generated strange graphics) my Debian package installs separate
terminfos for "linux-5250" and "xterm-5250", which are based on the
standard ones by including them:

------------------------------------------------------------
5250|linux-5250|linux console 5250 terminal,
        kf21=\E[35~, kf22=\E[36~, kf23=\E[37~, kf24=\E[38~,
        use=linux,
------------------------------------------------------------
xt5250|xterm-5250|xterm 5250 terminal,
        kf21=\E[35~, kf22=\E[36~, kf23=\E[37~, kf24=\E[38~,
        kcbt=\E[Z,
        use=xterm-xfree86,
------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
         Carey Evans  http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/c.evans/

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