Widows users readme.txt format

[badbod]

Hi,
  I am guessing that most windows users may not have custom (or well behaved) editors as default. The readme.txt after install looks a real mess in notepad. Notepad is the default windows viewer for .txt files. Please check. Does Notepad respect \n\r . It knows carriage returns of one sort or another. Else maybe consider another format?

Just mentioning it as I installed the latest version in windows today, when I clicked yes to the readme I was confronted with a mess.

David

[weltall]

it means it has unix \n only. wordpad can open it.

[Kiko]

I've had that problem, and ended up helping others fix the same thing because they had no idea of file types and formats. I find RTF is the best, as Wordpad will open it, and every other editor that does also respects the line breaks (plus font styling can be useful of course).

[softcoder]

Most people who would open a text file in windows to read readme's are likely techie users. Just download and use notepad++ (free opensource editor for windows) which is insanely awesome and views unix text files perfectly.

[Coldfusionstorm]

i swear to notepad++, if i ever take my time to learn anything other than XML, it will be because of notepad, thats how awesome it is.

[Omega]

Yeah, it's in unix format. It would work on both systems if converted to /r/n line endings (carriage return and line feed), as (to my knowledge) all Linux OS's handle it gracefully. Microsoft's notepad is crap (they should replace it with Notepad++ in Windows 8 ), and can't handle really anything. Not too big of a deal, though.

[John.d.h]

Yeah, it's in unix format. It would work on both systems if converted to /r/n line endings (carriage return and line feed), as (to my knowledge) all Linux OS's handle it gracefully. Microsoft's notepad is crap (they should replace it with Notepad++ in Windows , and can't handle really anything. Not too big of a deal, though.

But why can't MS Paint open Glest's texture files?! 

[badbod]

Hi Softcoder,
  The default viewer for .txt files is notepad, so only techi users would not be using notepad to view it. I use notepad++ but only associate it with the file-types I want, like .php or .html. Usually, most .txt come up fine in windows notepad, but I am guessing that is cos whoever wrote them knew that only technical types would not be using windows notepad as their default .txt file viewer.

 I am talking about the readme.txt at the end of installation "Do you want to read the readme" option.

Regards

[titi]

This is how it feels when you are not the main target of a development. Development is done in Linux for Linux and Windows is just a port somehow and by this there might show up some regressions ...
( None of the developers uses Windows if he is not forced to  )
I am not sure if we can fix it so easily, because debian compliance is more important in this case. But at least the installer should show the txt file with wordpad ...

[weltall]

if you are using eol-style = native in svn (there is for sure something similar in git) you'll be able to have it checkout in windows format on windows and unix format on the rest.

[Omega]

This is how it feels when you are not the main target of a development. Development is done in Linux for Linux and Windows is just a port somehow and by this there might show up some regressions ...
( None of the developers uses Windows if he is not forced to  )
I am not sure if we can fix it so easily, because debian compliance is more important in this case. But at least the installer should show the txt file with wordpad ...

What an interesting reversal. Vanilla Glest was created solely for Windows, then later ported to GAE. But at any rate, all Linux OS's and there superior default text editors handle both /n and /r/n line endings gracefully (just like Notepad++).

[tomreyn]

I think it's problematic if the default Windows configuration doesn't allow the average user to easily access content we want them to read, i.e. the README file. And if there can be ways to work around this limitation without failing to comply with other standards which we deem to be more important (does Debian require us to use \n instead of \r\n line endings?) and doesn't break compatibility with other platforms (does OS X handle \r\n as expected by default?) then we should go with these.

Will brought up that there are ways to have different line endings per platform when using SVN. We could probably weave this into our build system?

If this turns out to be not so straight forward then we could have a script which runs when we build Windows installers and converts all .txt files to classic Windows line endings (\r\n).

Finally, should none of these options work out (I can hardly imagine this, though) we can still add an FAQ entry which recommends to change Windows defaults to open .txt files with a proper text editor such as Wordpad (AKA Windows Write).

[Omega]

Finally, should none of these options work out (I can hardly imagine this, though) we can still add an FAQ entry which recommends to change Windows defaults to open .txt files with a proper text editor such as Wordpad (AKA Windows Write).

On a side note, I wouldn't consider Wordpad to be a "proper" text editor by any means. Windows is pretty dumbed down when it comes to text editors.

And to my knowledge, OS X handles Windows EoLs fine, though I can't confirm that personally.

[badbod]

I am not sure how many people will click to see the readme after install, the dialogue box does recommend this as it contains important  information etc. As suggested already - maybe a script in the windows build to convert the txt file to .rtf would solve it. Or adding \r\n, or even convert to .doc?

There are more important issues, like all the overflowing text in the server browser page in-game, the join server buttons hidden behind text etc. Just though I would bring up this txt file issue as it does look untidy. Depends on your priorities though as to if/when it should be addressed.

Regards

[Omega]

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