Re: [MiNT] Proposition

[Michael Schwingen <rincewind@discworld.dascon.de>]

On Sat, Apr 03, 1999 at 12:35:09PM +0000, kellis wrote:
> We have to understand that env variables (to come back to the first
> subject) will have to have a special name because of GEM.
> As in:
> 
> ftp_client = /usr/local/bin/ncftp
> GEM_FTP = /usr/gem/bin/aftp.prg
> 
> In the sense that there is a need to have cli (unix school) + GEM ones

I think it is a bad idea to do this via environment variables, since it is
unflexible, and requires a central authority to make sure what variables
should be used for what purpose.

Why not simply use /etc/mailcap? The version on my Linux machine contains
(among others):

text/html; /usr/bin/lynx -force_html %s; needsterminal; description=HTML Text; nametemplate=%s.html

For launching applications, this seems a lotmore flexible (or you can rely
on your desktop to handle that kind of stuff via its built-in mechanism).

> Same for POP server, I have seen, $POP_HOST, $POP_SERVER, $POP_HOSTNAME,
> $POP_DAEMON etc etc (I made some up here ;)

OK, you could set this via an env variable, however, the POP server may
change depending on what dialup connection I use right now, or there may be
multiple accounts on multiple servers, so an env variable seems too
unflexible for this purpose to me.

I am not sure how do do this better - maybe a config file with a defined
format (and fixed position/filename in /etc), which handles more than just
the POP server, but info on whole connections.

cu
Michael
-- 
Michael Schwingen, Ahornstrasse 36, 52074 Aachen