[BRLTTY] Feature request: configurable prompt pattern

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Nicolas Pitre on 2018/03/14 at 15:49 -0400]

>Good, I agree with that part. But keeping the same analogy: what if one 
>of your kid wants to be a race car driver? You could say to your kid: 
>"you can't because the family car is suitable for casual driving only" 
>or "a race car is dangerous and your brothers/sisters might never have 
>the skills to drive it, so for their safety you can't drive one."

Yes, I understand that, and, in fact, have personally used that exact line of 
reasoning on one of my employers (back in the '90s). Back in the days before 
VPNs were understood very well by bosses, that employer had a rule that, from 
home, we could connect either to their network or to the internet, but not to 
both at the same time. I connected to both and was very open about it. One day, 
they kind of arrested me and tried to get me in serious trouble.

At one point, the guy actually said that, even if I knew what I was doing, they 
couldn't allow it because it wouldn't be fair to the others who didn't. To 
this, I asked him (my exact question), "Do you have children?" He answered, 
"Yes." I then asked, "If one of them is really good at something but the others 
aren't, do you deny him in order to be fair to the others?" He went quite 
silent, gave up his attempt to bully me into submission, and tried a different 
tactic the next day (which he also lost). Perhaps that's a story for another 
time, unless you (or anyone else) would like to hear it now.

>You must cater to the fact that one of your kids might be a big power 
>user, and that some advanced features simply won't be accessible or even 
>interesting to the other kids.

I completely agree. Regarding NX/PRPROMPT, however, we do have a conflict. I 
don't want to play the game of trying to find a new binding pair on every 
braille device so we can't break what's alreayd there and useful to a lot of 
people as is. This means that we must extend the current commands in the best 
possible way.

Additionally: What's been requested is entirely reasonable and definitely very 
useful. This, at least to me, means that it should be done in a way that 
doesn't require anyone who wants to use it to maintain a private key subtable. 
We should be making the new functionality as easy as possible for anyone to use 
so that inexperienced people can easily choose to grow into it, at their own 
individual pace, without having to learn more than absolutely necessary in 
order to get there.

>There is a point where you can't have a more powerful tool without 
>assuming bigger risks.  If I am blind and I acquire a chainsaw (which I 
>actually am and actually did) because I want more power than a hand saw, 
>then I must be trained for it and prepared to assume the risks. 

Yes, I agree. That doesn't mean, though, that we should barrel ahead without 
careful forethought. Also, as I eluded to earlier, I don't want to end up with 
a careless design.

>Yet there are people saying that blind people should be effectively isolated 
>from using a chainsaw. 

Not me! People should be free to do things. But, if a small change to a 
chainsaw would make it easier for a blind person to use, then why not ask for 
it. In most cases, such considerations actually benefit sighted people, too.

Wheelchair ramps, for example, were most likely initially implemented as a 
special needs consideration. The fact is, however, that those very same ramps 
make it so much easier for parents with strollers, pedestrians with grocery 
carts, etc. The right considerations tend to benefit everyone.

Here in Ottawa, the buses now have audio announcements that, among other 
things, tell you what the next stop is. That came about because of a bunch of 
whiny blind people (an approach I don't like). Our transit company, however, 
took some time imlementing it, and did it in a way that's made everyone happy. 
One thing they did, for example, was to also add easy-to-see screens that also 
show what the next stop is. Now, sighted people are even happy because they 
don't have to look through crowds, dirty or snow-covered windows, etc to figure 
out where they are.

>One thing I fully agree with, though, is the fact that chainsaws aren't for 
>everyone, blind or not, and most people will be happy buying lumber already 
>cut by default and that's OK.

Which is ultimately all I'm wanting to do, too, with this feature.

>Hence the need for an extended tool that provides the same results as 
>the simple one by default. 

Yes. The main point of mine that you're responding to was to challenge an 
attitude - not to resist the feature. I didn't like the way a few things were 
stated so I chose to speak up.

>This is why my proposal had a default regexp that maintained current 
>functionality.

Sure, but it's not all that easy for most to understand. I'd rather just say 
that no pattern means current behaviour.

Also, there's a subtle problem with your proposal. Let's say that the first 
word on the current line contains a character that's meaningful to a regular 
expression. It'd get substituted into the replacement, which would then make it 
become part of the pattern used for matching. That'd cause all kinds of odd 
behaviour that an average user may likely never figure out.

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