Wed, 09 Mar 2005

A step backwards

16298:jordi@nubol:~$ chsh
Password:
S'està canviant l'intèrpret d'accés per a jordi
Introduïu el nou valor, o premeu ENTER per al predeterminat
        Intèrpret d'accés [/usr/bin/zsh]: /bin/bash

This is not the first time I try to do this, but being used to mentally correct zsh's misshandling of UTF-8 input in the command line isn't the way one should be working everyday. While bash reportedly still has a few UTF-8/char vs. byte problems, I haven't found them yet. Zsh, on the other hand, makes me do weird stuff like backspacing twice, then Ctrl-l'ing to redisplay when I press ç instead of Enter, for example.

Of course, you can get used to this behaviour and end up doing the double backspacing without even noticing, and that's why I've been using zsh on a UTF-8 locale for years.

Switching to bash is a step backwards. I know many will argue it's not, but I really think it is. There are some features in zsh that AFAIK you can't get done in bash. While bash completion has gotten a lot better in the last years thanks to the bash_completion package, zsh's is just so much better. I'll have to get used, I guess. Or I'll switch back, which is what happened the last three times I tried to do this.

Em, the Zsh team is working on UTF-8 support atm.  Give them a month or two and they'll probably have it at Bash's level of support.

Posted by Nikolai Weibull at Wed Mar 9 15:19:50 2005

Hey Nikolai,

This is great news. I've been asking Clint Adams every now and then since I switched to a UTF-8 locale, but he always said it would take a long time as zsh didn't use readline and it fixing this would mean rewriting many chunks of code.

Of course, I'll be looking for when this is fixed, and will happily come back.

Posted by Jordi at Thu Mar 10 11:29:24 2005