26 Jul
2010
26 Jul
'10
2:22 p.m.
From: Ian King
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 1:51 PM
From: Pete Turnbull
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 1:26 PM
> On 26/07/2010 19:22, J.G.Harston wrote:
>> Rick Murray wrote:
>>>> ".bbc" - Russell format
>>>> ".bas" - Text
>>>> "." - Acorn format
>>> No, very *BAD* to use *.bas - double click
on those, I'll
>>> have the fun of watching Visual Basic trying to load a
>>> tokenised BASIC code. :-)
> "Well, don't do that, then," said
the helpdesk techie.
>> .bas is the standard extension for textual
representation of
>> BASIC (*any* BASIC) code. If some application decide to
>> stupidly associate themselves with it and try to execute it,
>> that's their stupid fault.
> I'm with Jonathan. .bas is the accepted
extension for all
> sorts of BASIC files, and using something else is only going
> to cause confusion elsewhere. Double-clicking is supposed
> to "run" a file or cause it to be executed; if the only BASIC
> interpreter you have is the VB executable and it tries to load
> the file you double-clicked, well that's because the
> doubler-clicker was daft enough to do an inappropriate
> thing :-)
Yes, this can be *highly* annoying. I frequently want to have a
look at Macro-10 or Macro-11 files under GNU Emacs on my desktop or
laptop (both company-supplied and running Windows 7), and have to
argue with the bloody operating system about whether or not to let
QuickTime (!!!!) have a go at them.
Why? Because some ijjit thought that ".mac" was a good fit for some
audiovisual file type or other, and the operating system is too
damned helpful in assigning defaults.
> The appropriate thing, if you want to edit a file,
would be to
> right-click and select "open with" -- assuming we're talking
> about a Windows OS. Or use whatever weird combination of key
> and mouse performs "open" rather than "run".
Or open it from within the editor.... Gnu Emacs does
not register
itself so it can be selected as an "Open With" choice on Windows
and I don't feel like futzing with it. So I just start Emacs and
c-x c-v. (Disclaimer: I'm only learning/using Emacs because of
its historical significance - I use EDT on our VAX-11s for the
same reason. I'm really a vi fan.)
That's very easily fixed: Click "Browse", choose GNU Emacs's starup
.exe (runemacs.exe), and assign it as the permanent opener for the
file type. That's not much futzing.[1] I've done that with any
number of things which would doubtless make Windows very unhappy if
I gave a damn about Windows' feelings. ;-)
I use Emacs because I learned it in 1978 on the UChicago DEC-20 and
fell in love with it, enough so that I read through many many of the
TECO source files as well as the Info documents. (When I worked as
a financial systems programmer for the university, I did my editing
on the -20 and shipped jobs to the Amdahl 470, and later the 3031,
using HASP RJE, and got my output the same way.) When GNU Emacs
came along, I was very happy.
Oh, I should mention that Richard Stallman agrees that I'm the
current maintainer of TECO EMACS. :-)
[1] Futzing[2] is when you go into the registry and change the Open
and Edit properties. I've done that on occasion when Windows got
even further in the way.
[2] Remember, that word is a lot more obscene than most Americans think
it is...
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/