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CRLF is obsolete and should be abolished

(fossil-scm.org)
422 points km | 3 comments | 13 Oct 24 19:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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sunk1st ◴[13 Oct 24 21:43 UTC] No.41831903[source]▶
> Nobody ever wants to be in the middle of a line, then move down to the next line and continue writing in the next column from where you left off. No real-world program ever wants to do that.

Is this true?

replies(3): >>41832247 #>>41832448 #>>41834586 #
1. numpad0 ◴[13 Oct 24 22:52 UTC] No.41832448[source]▶
isn't CR without LF how CLI progress bars work?
replies(1): >>41833187 #
2. cowsandmilk ◴[14 Oct 24 01:04 UTC] No.41833187[source]▶
He says there are good usages of CR, he only argues for getting rid of LF.
replies(1): >>41840974 #
3. samatman ◴[14 Oct 24 19:27 UTC] No.41840974[source]▶
Replacing LF behavior with NL behavior in terminal raw mode is a non-starter, decades worth of software will break. The enter/return key only sends CR anyway, software has to decide what to do with that: sometimes the answer is emit CRLF, often there are program-defined margins so the CR gets translated to direct cursor movements.

I'm pretty sure drh is making a case only against the use of CRLF in protocols, not trying to redesign terminal in the process. If you're emulating a machine which understands LF then you're kinda stuck with line feed semantics, for better and for worse.