92680 - Pref for using LF instead of CR for source line breaks

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: Editor, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Steps to reproduce:
1) Write a page in Editor.
2) View it in Terminal using "less" or "cat"
Actual results:
Source line breaks are not recognized as line breaks.

Expected results:
Expected Editor to create proper Unix line breaks.

Additional information:
The trend seems to be towards Unix-style LF linebreaks and away from CR
linebreaks. Switching to LF would not harm postprocessing in popular GUI text
editors: BBEdit (Lite), ProjectBuilder and TextEdit all grok LF linebreaks.
OTOH, Unix tools want to have LF linebreaks.

Comment 1

[Jason Belcher]

I have absolutely no experience with MacOS, but I know that using the Windows
CR-LF linebreak format works with both Windows and Unix. Maybe use this format
so Mac programs parse the CR and Unix ones the LF?

Comment 2

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Please, no CRLF. It is an inpractical thing Microsoft should have gotten rid of
years ago and has no place on Mac OS X.

Comment 3

[Adam]

As long as it's an option and not mandatory (doesn't even have to have a UI - if
somebody's intelligent enough to know the difference, they should be intelligent
enough to edit the prefs by hand). This would only be an issue when using CLI
apps, and would royally suck when trying to edit composer files in classic
"LF-unaware" Mac apps. Maybe in the future when Mac OS 9 is dead and everything
supports LF line breaks, but not until then.

I would suggest making this selectable via a pop-up menu on the save dialog for
composer files. This seems to me something a user might want to change with
enough frequency that it would really be inefficient to stick it in the prefs. I
would also suggest having a line breaks field with the pop-up menu items being
"Macintosh," "Unix," etc..., as opposed to CR, LF, etc.

Comment 4

[rubydoo123]

handing over to sfraser for review and decision

Comment 5

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Personally, I'd like to see Editor either default to LF on Mac OS X or the pref
to have a GUI and apply to all documents. I'd rather not specify this separately
for each document.

akay, In what situation would an OS X user open a HTML document in a Classic app
that doesn't support LF? (Classic BBEdit [Lite], Classic browsers and Classic
HTML editors all support LF.)

Comment 6

[Adam]

The default should be the standard for the OS - whichever one Apple says 
is right in Mac OS X should be used (I'm not sure if they say CR or LF). 
There should then be prefs for saving a document with alternate 
linebreaks (maybe making this an XP issue - set the default to the system 
standard and then offer options for Unix/Mac/DOS linebreaks). This 
would, of course, require a global prefs item for users who want to 
change the default behavior, and an option in the save dialog for editor 
documents for those who only wish to change it for certain files.

Comment 7

[Kathleen :Brade]

*** Bug 192789 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

The need to emit CR line breaks is long gone. Can we close this after ensuring that Gecko-based editing apps use LF on Mac OS X?

Comment 9

[(no longer active)]

\n turned out to be the winner of line terminators across platforms, and that's what Gecko uses internally.