Subject: Linux-Development Digest #157
From: Digestifier <Linux-Development-Request@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Date:     Mon, 11 Oct 93 15:13:16 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #157, Volume #1         Mon, 11 Oct 93 15:13:16 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development") (David Barr)
  Re: Xview + Xrolo + Calentool HELP (Kenneth Osterberg)
  Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development") (John Miller)
  Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development") (Matt Welsh)
  Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development") (Byron A Jeff)
  void proposal (was: RFD: Removal of c.o.l.development) (Ian Kluft)
  Re: possible bug in virtual console switching (Risto Kankkunen)
  Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of grou (Dan Newcombe)
  coff, elf enough to run comapps? (Michael Utech)
  Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of grou (Dan Newcombe)
  Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of grou (Tim Pierce)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr)
Crossposted-To: news.groups
Subject: Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development")
Date: 11 Oct 1993 14:24:47 GMT

In article <29akis$5l6@samba.oit.unc.edu>,
Matt Welsh <mdw@sunSITE.unc.edu> wrote:
>However, I don't think that Mr. Peoples is in 
>any position to make policy decisions regarding the Linux development 
>community to which he has no relation.
>
>Do you?

        Mr. Peoples is not making a policy decision.  He posted an
RFD.  A "Request For Discussion".  The "Linux development community"
merely has to discuss his RFD, make an appropriate response, and
get on with life.  Don't dismiss his proposal simply because he's not
an active member of the "Linux development community".

        What do you say about making c.o.l.d moderated?

--Dave
-- 
System Administrator, Penn State Population Research Institute
"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent"
- Abraham Lincoln

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: lmfken@lmf.ericsson.se (Kenneth Osterberg)
Subject: Re: Xview + Xrolo + Calentool HELP
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 14:50:22 GMT

cosc19v2@menudo.uh.edu (Odie) writes:

>I would like to run Xrolo and Calentool, without installing all the
>things in Xview distribution package.  As far as I know, I only need
>xview's libraries.

True

>Could someone tell me where I can get the *minimum* xview package
>for running xrolo and calentool ?
>I have only limited disk space and I really don't need to  use all the 
>fantastic things in the packages.

>I tried lib.tar in the xview distribution, which gave me "X:0 server not
>connected" error when I ran xrolo.
>I think that I need to run "Install" script to automate the procedure
>which requires gcc (oops I don't have space to install gcc at this moment).

Check that you have the 75dpi fonts installed. Xview applications
require these.

You don't need gcc to install xview. The installation program allows you
to compile the example programs, but it asks if you want to do it
first. Just answer no to the question.

Also, you don't need the static libraries, so answer no when Install asks
about them.

You can also delete the header files: 

rm -r /usr/openwin/include/*

You can also delete all the UIT libraries, unless you have some UIT
applications:

find /usr/openwin -name 'libU*' -exec rm {} \; -print

I haven't looked at xrolo, but it probably does not use the SlingShot
extensions. Thus you can remove the slingshot libraries, too:

find /usr/openwin -name 'libss*' -exec rm {} \; -print

In xview3L5 there are some postscript docs under
/usr/openwin/share/docs (?), which also can be removed.

The end result should be a pretty slim runtime environment.

>I think that it would be a good idea to have xview run time package
>for running xview binaries.
>Current xview distribution is too big !  (Is it only for Xview programmers ?)

You are free to delete what you don't need. It's your system, remember :-)

--
Kenneth Osterberg      lmfken@lmf.ericsson.se or lmfken@bluese1.ericsson.fi

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: news.groups
From: jsm@netcom.com (John Miller)
Subject: Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development")
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 15:07:13 GMT

David Barr (barr@pop.psu.edu) wrote:

:       Mr. Peoples is not making a policy decision.  He posted an
: RFD.  A "Request For Discussion".  The "Linux development community"
: merely has to discuss his RFD, make an appropriate response, and
: get on with life.  Don't dismiss his proposal simply because he's not
: an active member of the "Linux development community".

:       What do you say about making c.o.l.d moderated?

<dead horse mode enabled>

Folks, my apologies if this was already hashed during the
vote, but would it help any if the group were called

        comp.os.linux.developers

???
-- 
John Miller, N4VU                 Linux!                    Fayetteville
jsm@n4vu.Atl.GA.US                DoD #1942                    (Atlanta) 
{emory,gatech}!n4hgf!n4vu         AMA # 671301                    GA, US

------------------------------

From: mdw@sunSITE.unc.edu (Matt Welsh)
Crossposted-To: news.groups
Subject: Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development")
Date: 11 Oct 1993 16:01:58 GMT

In article <29bqbf$m1s@soc2.pop.psu.edu>, David Barr <barr@pop.psu.edu> wrote:
>In article <29akis$5l6@samba.oit.unc.edu>,
>Matt Welsh <mdw@sunSITE.unc.edu> wrote:
>>However, I don't think that Mr. Peoples is in
>>any position to make policy decisions regarding the Linux development
>>community to which he has no relation.
>>
>>Do you?
>
>       Mr. Peoples is not making a policy decision.  He posted an
>RFD.  A "Request For Discussion".  

And an unofficial RFD at that. But that's not the point... 

>       What do you say about making c.o.l.d moderated?

I don't believe that you can or should moderate a discussion group.
This group is for discussions and questions about Linux. The problem is that
we have a group of people who are trying to self-moderate by policing the
group. Now, to some degree, this is fine. We don't want user-end questions  
here. But flaming each and every erroneous posting is unnecessary. It would
be much simpler to be "nice" about it and respond to people via e-mail
pointing out their mistake. That's all.

If we were to moderate this group, there would be VERY LITTLE traffic through 
it; it takes a lot of work to moderate even a low-traffic group such as 
c.o.l.a. Even given several moderators, you can't moderate a discussion 
group. These groups have to be self-moderating, but I don't think that
the self-moderation at this point is working very well.

mdw
-- 
Send submissions for comp.os.linux.announce to: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: news.groups
From: byron@cc.gatech.edu (Byron A Jeff)
Subject: Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of group "comp.os.linux.development")
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 16:20:39 GMT

In article <29bqbf$m1s@soc2.pop.psu.edu>, David Barr <barr@pop.psu.edu> wrote:
>In article <29akis$5l6@samba.oit.unc.edu>,
>Matt Welsh <mdw@sunSITE.unc.edu> wrote:
>>However, I don't think that Mr. Peoples is in 
>>any position to make policy decisions regarding the Linux development 
>>community to which he has no relation.
>>
>>Do you?
>
>       Mr. Peoples is not making a policy decision.  He posted an
>RFD.  A "Request For Discussion".  The "Linux development community"
>merely has to discuss his RFD, make an appropriate response, and
>get on with life.  Don't dismiss his proposal simply because he's not
>an active member of the "Linux development community".
>
>       What do you say about making c.o.l.d moderated?

I don't think so. I think Ian position "No questions. Period." is a bit
strong but moderation isn't the solution. I think that legitimate development
questions are appropriate and necessary for this group to function properly.

However most of the questions dropped in this group are more appropriately
target for c.o.l.help. Unfortunately folks don't read the charter when they
have a question: they just post. 

As for deleting the newsgroup Mr. Peoples is being sarcastic. He's saying
that a group that can't have questions isn't real useful. He's right. But
the group needs appropriate questions.

The solution is to gently remind people that post questions in the wrong
newsgroup that c.o.l.help is designed specifically to answer their 
questions. Moreover when a question that is not specifically related to
development is posted here: DON'T ANSWER IT! By answering it here is encourages
people to continue to post them. Ian was doing this is the language of 
frustration because the post that caused this ruckus was A) in the FAQ or
HOWTO's and B) had nothing to do with development.

So here's my unofficial ;-) bottom line.

1) Development questions are welcome.
2) Non-development questions should be directed to c.o.l.help and
3) Non-development questions should not be answered here.

I gurantee that if we don't answer the questions here people will stop posting
them here.

How's that for discussion....

BAJ
---
Another random extraction from the mental bit stream of...
Byron A. Jeff - PhD student operating in parallel!
Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332   Internet: byron@cc.gatech.edu

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: news.groups
From: ikluft@sbay.org (Ian Kluft)
Subject: void proposal (was: RFD: Removal of c.o.l.development)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 00:02:30 GMT

tep@rzrbyte.fay.ar.us (Tim Peoples) writes:
>                        Request For Discussion
>                    Removal of the USENET newsgroup
>                      "comp.os.linux.development"

A procedural note: this RFD was not official because it did not
follow the guidelines.  It should have been cross-posted to
news.announce.newgroups for consideration by the moderator.

In any case, since the real issue appears to be a reader misunder-
standing, I will recommend that such action not be pursued.

>Whereas,
>     the USENET newsgroup "comp.os.linux.development" (c.o.l.d) was
>     brought into being for the open (and unmoderated) discussion of
>     software and system development issues as applied to the Linux
>     operating system; and

This is not correct, and I think it shows the cause of the conflict.
The reader apparently wanted what is shown above.  The real chartered
purpose of comp.os.linux.development was for discussion of development
*of* Linux, not development of software as applied to Linux.

>Whereas,
>     it is the convention on USENET newsgroups that a major part of
>     any open discussion is the broad distribution of "questions" as
>     they pertain to the agreed upon subject matter of any given
>     newsgroup; and

This is also not correct.  UseNet newsgroups must follow the purpose
they were charted under at the time they were voted into existence.
Some are for periodic informational postings (i.e. news.answers,
rec.aviation.answers, rec.radio.info, etc).  Some are for discussion
including questions.  Many other variations exist.

c.o.l.development does not include generic Linux questions because those
are the chartered territory of c.o.l.help.  Users have been continuously
encouraged to think about the purposes of the newsgroups when selecting
one to post in.

>Whereas,
>     a small yet vocal group of active readers of c.o.l.d have ever
>     so rightiously taken it upon themselves to be the self appointed
>     guardians of content for messages posted to c.o.l.d; and

A small group may be vocal about it.  It is likely to be supported by
many of the users of the group because new user questions effectively
squashed technical discussion in the pre-August comp.os.linux.

>Whereas,
>     this group of readers has made public announcement that the
>     asking of questions will not be tolerated on the group c.o.l.d; and

That is consistent with the charter of c.o.l.development.  Considering the
existence of c.o.l.help, there should not be requests for help anywhere
else.

>Whereas,
>     there is no need for a USENET newsgroup in which questions are
>     not tolerated;

This was already answered above... see the paragraph about newsgroup
charters.

>Therefore,

>     I propose that the newsgroup "comp.os.linux.development" be
>     removed from the USENET system.

If you really intend to do this.  Read the guidelines before resubmitting
the proposal.  I don't think it will get far - probably not worth the
time to try.  If replies keep going like they have, it would never be
allowed to go to a vote.

Frankly, this looks like someone's selfish reaction to not getting his way.
It is definitely caused by a lack of  understanding the real purpose of
c.o.l.development, which I hope has been remedied in the numerous replies
that the unofficial RFD has received.  

If you want to change things on UseNet, you *must* have a better under-
standing of what's going on than that.  Making changes in newsgroups are
long and painful processes which must be popular to have a chance of
making it to a vote.
-- 
Ian Kluft  KD6EUI PP-ASEL
ikluft@thunder.sbay.org (home)  ikluft@uts.amdahl.com (work)   Santa Clara, CA

------------------------------

From: kankkune@cs.Helsinki.FI (Risto Kankkunen)
Subject: Re: possible bug in virtual console switching
Date: 11 Oct 1993 16:48:05 GMT

>I find the same thing (with dosemu and other VC's).  So, there's
>clearly something wrong.  And what's wrong is the VC switching, and in
>particular, that part of it that both X and dosemu use.  Further,
>whatever it is about the keyboard that bash uses to go into vi mode is
>be changed, so that should provide a clue.  If I had the sources to
>bash handy I might even try to track it down myself....

There was a bug in the keyboard driver that made it confuse the state of
modifier keys when switching between raw and nonraw consoles. I thought
that was fixed in pl13, at least a patch for that was sent to Linus. (I
can't currently verify that with dosemu or X, I don't have a working
version of them installed.)



--
                                         It's that time of the year again

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: news.groups
From: dnewcomb@cybernet.cse.fau.edu (Dan Newcombe)
Subject: Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of grou
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 16:40:19 GMT

barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr) writes:
>       Mr. Peoples is not making a policy decision.  He posted an
> RFD.  A "Request For Discussion".  The "Linux development community"
> merely has to discuss his RFD, make an appropriate response, and
> get on with life.  Don't dismiss his proposal simply because he's not
> an active member of the "Linux development community".

But do dismiss it because it has no basis in fact, and is just a retaliation
that is probably due to eitehr sore feelings or an extremley touching flame.

>       What do you say about making c.o.l.d moderated?

I say it sucks.  No offense to you David.  But the idea of a discussion
group, especially something like an OS kernel, is to have ongoing
discussions.  If the group was moderated, then one or few people would be
making the decisions as to what the rest of us need to be seeing.  This will
kill development.

Take for instance:  Parallel port sound drivers.
        About 10+ months ago I posted something asking about the
availability of a parallel port sound driver (I can't afford a soundcard,
I'm getting married).  I was shot down, laughed at and over all humiliated for
asking (ok, so someone said no.)  but I was told that due to the number of
interuptts for the parallel port, this would be unfeasable, as it would tie
up the CPU too much.  Well, there are currently two parallel port sound
drivers available for the kernel.  Now imagine if you will these developers
had seen my posting and the resulting answer and said "No, that can be 
gotten around." and this is what inspired them to do it.  If someone had
decided even before my post got out that "Oh, that's silly" and denied
it then where would us poor people be?


While this may be a little far fetched, it can give you an idea what could
happen.  True, we may need people to say *nicely* to some newbies that their
post should go to c.o.l.help - without flamage, but by no means should a
handful be saying what is and isn't development - unless maybe it's Linus :)

Sorry for typos/spelling errors, but telneting is slow, and no spell
checker...

        -Dan [verbose mode]

  
--
Dan Newcombe         dnewcomb@cybernet.cse.fau.edu      and many others...
"The fool who escaped from paradise will look over his shoulder and cry."
                                -Marillion, "Script for a Jesters Tear"
- Check out Linux - the FREE i386+ 32-bit Unixlike system - email me for info -



------------------------------

From: michael@utex.rni.sub.org (Michael Utech)
Subject: coff, elf enough to run comapps?
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 11:08:07 GMT

I understand that COFF and ELF are object file formats. I opened a
nutshell and read that this (coff) is not limited to intel
platforms. So i wonder whether having coff and/or elf support is
enough to run binaries compiled for eg. SCO, ISC Unices? How about
system calls, is their definition also covered by the object file
format? Will it be possible to run all (or at least majority of) SCO
binaries when coff support will be finished (or beta, gamma, ...)  for
Linux?

A related question: I read that Linux uses a.out (BSD's) OFF, but
it doesn't seem to be possible to run (386/Free)BSD(386). Right?

Greetings,
- Michael

PS: hope that this isn't a too frequently asked question :/
-- 
Michael Utech, Max-Planck-Str.26, 69519 Viernheim, Germany
email: michael@utex.rni.sub.org, fm04@rummelplatz.uni-mannheim.de
phone: +49 6204 {4031 (home), 65929 (work), 740309 (data)}

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: news.groups
From: dnewcomb@cybernet.cse.fau.edu (Dan Newcombe)
Subject: Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of grou
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 18:03:21 GMT

byron@cc.gatech.edu (Byron A Jeff) writes:
> So here's my unofficial ;-) bottom line.
> 
> 1) Development questions are welcome.
> 2) Non-development questions should be directed to c.o.l.help and
> 3) Non-development questions should not be answered here.
> 
> I gurantee that if we don't answer the questions here people will stop postin
> them here.

But you forget.  People will cross post them to c.o.l.a, c.o.l.d, c.o.l.m,
c.o.l.h, and rec.arts.music :)   That is probably where the worst of our
problems are.  Not form people posting/answering here, but people
cross-posting and us having to see all the answers, despite the charter
saying it is discouraged (Then again, we can't get half the people to read
the FAQ, much less a charter.)

        -Dan
  
--
Dan Newcombe         dnewcomb@cybernet.cse.fau.edu      and many others...
"The fool who escaped from paradise will look over his shoulder and cry."
                                -Marillion, "Script for a Jesters Tear"
- Check out Linux - the FREE i386+ 32-bit Unixlike system - email me for info -



------------------------------

From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Crossposted-To: news.groups
Subject: Re: Questions are permitted on c.o.l.d (was Re: RFD: Removal of grou
Date: 11 Oct 1993 14:54:57 -0400

In article <wHL0ac6w165w@cybernet.cse.fau.edu>,
Dan Newcombe <dnewcomb@cybernet.cse.fau.edu> wrote:

>But the idea of a discussion
>group, especially something like an OS kernel, is to have ongoing
>discussions.  If the group was moderated, then one or few people would be
>making the decisions as to what the rest of us need to be seeing.

Moderation does not preclude discussion.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / 
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /             All kids love syslog.
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / 

------------------------------


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