[Bug: 21.5-b28] XEmacs dired didn't work with FreeBSD ls

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

On 10/10/07, Michael Sperber <sperber at deinprogramm.de> wrote:
>
> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:
>
> > Michael Sperber writes:

> > I'm not clear on what you mean.
>
> "turn the switch and cut another release", meaning I force the locale to
> POSIX.  However, maybe there's another way:

I'm asking "how did you implement 'better with locales'?"

> > IIRC, you have a big-ball-of-mud regexp (or list thereof) that tries
> > to handle all known date formats.  The conservative approach I want
> > (on POSIX systems) is a variable `dired-grokkable-locales' which
> > contains a list of regexps that match grokkable locales.
>
> OK, but is the format of the locale strings sufficiently portable, and
> the corresponding output format of ls sufficiently consistent across
> systems?

No, they're not, your experience that identifiers are unportable is
quite representative.  That's why I call it "conservative": because
more people will get POSIX than really need to.  The point of this
proposal is to ensure that we only allow locales when we've explicitly
decided to.

> > If you're really that confident that you've got almost all the locales
> > in actual use, we could do it the way you suggest.  I would implement
> > the configuration to have a variable `dired-ls-locale' (maybe there's
> > a better name that doesn't discriminate against Windows).  If nil,
> > don't frob the locale.  If set, use that locale.  The Custom widget
> > for the variable should contain a list of common locales that the user
> > might want (to approximate their own locale, or to substitute a
> > familiar locale).  WDYT?
>
> That was my plan.

OK, let's try that.  On reflection, let's not go on a hair trigger
about defaulting to POSIX, either.  Let's see how easily the users
find and use the variable (or the Customization) before defaulting to
something where they probably won't bother to try the "nice" variant
because POSIX is "good enough."