[BRLTTY] Default braille table

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Dave Mielke wrote:

> [quoted lines by Nicolas Pitre on 2009/10/02 at 14:46 -0400]
> 
> >If the user goes to the trouble of explicitly specifying a table during 
> >configure then this certainly should be the first default.  If that 
> >default can't be found, or if it simply wasn't specified in the first 
> >place, then should autoselection kick in.
> 
> It'll always be found because it's built into the executable.

Ah.  I forgot about that.

> The algorithm actually is to default to auto. Now if either 
> autoselection or the specified table (option or brltty.conf) fails 
> then fall back to the built-in table.

... which completely makes sense.

> So, to fix it as you describe, which may well be the right thing to do, means 
> that we have to kind of twist the algorithm a bit. It'll have to use the 
> built-in table unless it needs to default, in which case it should do 
> autoselection with a fallback to the built-in table. I'll have a look into it.

Well, I'm not sure anymore.

> Let me first, though, put the question a different way. Ignoring what the 
> documentation says for a moment, does it make more sense for the 
> --with-text-table option to be defining the default table or the fallback 
> table?

It probably should define the default table (which doesn't necessarily 
have to be the built-in table).  I guess to make things totally 
unambiguous, we'd need:

--with-builtin-text-table

  Specifies the text translation table built into the BRLTTY executable.
  This table is used when no external tables can be loaded.

--with-default-text-table

  Specifies the text translation table to use by default if no other 
  table specification is provided via the command line or the 
  configuration file.  If this option is not specified, the default 
  action is to auto-select the table based on the current locale.

--with-text-table

  This is the same as specifying --with-text-builtin-table and 
  --with-default-text-table using the same argument.

Now the question is whether or not the built-in table should be used 
when it matches what the user asked for even if that table exists 
externally.  I think it is preferable to use an external version of the 
table when available in preference to the built-in one in order to 
benefit from any modifications the user might have done to it.

Does this make sense?


Nicolas