Re: gnu readline / license

[Arnd B. <arn...@we...>]

On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Petr Mikulik wrote:

> > Debian's gnuplot comes w/o gnu readline, which is very bad in my
> > opinion. The reason is a license problem, which is documented by the
> > package maintainer Thimo Neubauer <th...@de...> (in
> > /usr/share/doc/gnuplot/README.Debian):
>
> Solution to this problem is to implement <TAB>-expansion of filenames in
> gnuplot's readline library. There was some discussion about it few years
> ago, but nobody did it.
> 	TAB is the only difference, I guess?

Long lines don't work either: i.e., for a line
longer than the width of the terminal window you cannot get
to the very beginning of that line.
(this is with debian testing, gnuplot Version 3.8k patchlevel 1,
debian unstable offers 4.0)
This is also filed as bug under
  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=75403

There Thimo Neubauer also wrote

"""
I've already proposed to the upstream authors to use libeditline which
is at least better than the internal commandline-stuff and is licensed
under BSD-license. However my patches weren't accepted yet...
"""

From the README of libeditline:
"""
This is a line-editing library.  It can be linked into almost any
program to provide command-line editing and recall.

It is call-compatible with the FSF readline library, but it is a
fraction of the size (and offers fewer features).  It does not use
standard I/O.  It is distributed under a "C News-like" copyright.

"""
(I downloaded that from
http://packages.debian.org/testing/source/editline)

Best,

Arnd