Subject: Re: 9menu

From: [email-masked] (Arnold Robbins)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 10:59:04 -0500

>| == Rob
>  == Scott

> | i disagree: the SHELL variable is conventionally just what you want:
> | an indication of what interactive shell the user desires. the argument
> | about make is spurious because make's functioning requires a
> | standard shell; 9menu is for interactive applications, a different
> | subject entirely.
> 
> That's the crucial point: is 9menu itself an interactive application,
> or is it a tool that that should support a standard syntax?  My
> impression is that the latter is the more useful view, because it
> permits users to exchange 9menu command lines without depending upon
> which interactive shell each of them uses.

I have to admit that this is mostly how I envision 9menu, as a tool, not an
interactive application. (It's interactive through the mouse, but that's
orthogonal to the issue here.)  My own expectation is that 9menu commands
would run shell scripts that execute the larger tasks, and those scripts
can be in any shell you like, via !#.  This has the major advantage that
you can edit the shell script without having to restart 9menu each time.

I haven't completely decided yet how to deal with this. I'm semi-leaning
towards a command line option -shell, instead of $SHELL.

Arnold