CRLF is obsolete and should be abolished • Hacker News Board

Re: CRLF is obsolete and should be abolished

#271

Post by romwell » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 11:24 PM UTC

Joker_vD wrote: post #223

romwell wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The latter is what typewriters do for the Return key. Minor correction: mechanical typewriters do not have a Return key, but they have both operations (line feed, as well as carriage return). The carriage return lever is typically rigged to also do line feed at the same time, by a preset amount of lines (which can be set to 0), or you can push the carriage without engaging line feed. Technically, the lever would do…

Naked CR is an almost (baring legacy Mac OS) universally supported cross-platform way to print progress bars on CRT terminals.

Note that I said that it would make sense a CRLF command too, as in: in addition to separate CR and LF commands, which are useful in their own rights.

I also strongly disagree with the author that LF is useless.

So many times in code I need to type:

    Function blah(parameter1 = default1, 
                  parameter2, ...)

It would be super nice to move down from the beginning of the word "parameter1" down to the next line even when it's empty to start typing at that position.

Sure, there is auto format. But not in this comment box.

And what I'm talking about is exactly what LF was meant to do!

I want all my text boxes to support that, and to have a special key on my keyboard to do it.

Eh.

Re: CRLF is obsolete and should be abolished

#272

Post by tptacek » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 2:49 AM UTC

inopinatus wrote: post #261

tptacek wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe in Postel's Law, but I also don't believe in reverential adherence to standards documents. Make good engineering decisions on their own merits. This article is right: CRLF is dumb. You know who agrees with me about that? The IETF, in their (very old) informational RFC about the origins of CRLF in their protocols.

Yes, CRLF is dumb. Trying to justify the problem seems unnecessary, it's widely acknowledged. A productive inquiry looks at why fixing it didn't happen yet. Don't confuse that line of thought for calling for more failure. This is unrealistic, though: > I don't believe in Postel's Law All the systems around us that work properly do believe in it, and they will continue to do so. No-one who writes MTAs or reverse proxi…

Hold on: if you do believe in Postel's Law, you agree with me: just send newlines.

Re: CRLF is obsolete and should be abolished

#273

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 10:27 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #272

inopinatus wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, CRLF is dumb. Trying to justify the problem seems unnecessary, it's widely acknowledged. A productive inquiry looks at why fixing it didn't happen yet. Don't confuse that line of thought for calling for more failure. This is unrealistic, though: > I don't believe in Postel's Law All the systems around us that work properly do believe in it, and they will continue to do so. No-one who writes MTAs or reverse proxi…

Hold on: if you do believe in Postel's Law, you agree with me: just send newlines.

[deleted]