3 ms·

It's because the code was written on classic Mac OS, which used CR newlines rather than the LF or CRLF styles used today.

shmerl 9y ago
Well, they could just apply a minimal cleanup for end lines before posting.
- pvg 9y ago
  Then the people who want to compile it rather than complain about it would have to go through an extra hoop to fix it again. They published it the right way.
  - Skunkleton 9y ago
    Plus, if they replaced the ^Ms, what would we have to complain about? This truly is the best way. People can complain, and people can compile.
    - pvg 9y ago
      That is an excellent point although I suspect your question is going to be answered in spades when people notice who the developer posting the code is.
      - Skunkleton 9y ago
        I don't know anything about this developer?
  - mrpippy 9y ago
    Agreed, at least make sure it will still compile with line endings changed before submitting pull requests. This builds with CodeWarrior 10 (from 1996) which is probably OK with non-Mac line endings, but there are other old Mac codebases on GitHub using older toolchains that require CR. (i.e. Pararena 2: http://bslabs.net/2016/11/13/building-pararena/ http://bslabs.net/2016/11/13/building-pararena/) A PPC Mac running OS X 10.4 is basically the only way to work with both git and classic Mac dev environments, I'll be trying this out myself.
    - vt240 9y ago
      I still have my Power MachTen CD. I used to love wasting time porting GNU/Linux source to that odd ball environment.
      - mrpippy 9y ago
        A year or two ago I built dropbear on Power MachTen, worked great and just needed a couple fixes to bring it back into compatibility with GCC 2.x. Playing around with Professional MachTen (for 68k) is a real trip though. 4.3BSD, an even older GCC, and it implements virtual memory and protection by taking over the system memory manager. (You actually have to restart when quitting it) It would be so cool to have something like MachTen on iOS, some people have tried but the restrictions on executable pages really restricts things.
- monocasa 9y ago
  Eh, I prefer when they don't clean up anything. It feels more like real archival work.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
k__ 9y ago
lol, I knew LF and CRLF was a thing, but only CR? Interesting :D
- eterm 9y ago
  Taken literally just CR seems very odd. You probably know this, but LF is "line feed" which advances the feed. CR is "carriage return" which puts the carridge to the start of the line. The combination makes sense because it does both, it returns the carriage and advances the line. Just LF kind of makes sense because when you advance the line you can think of the line being empty. But conceptually just CR suggests returning the carriage but that doesn't imply the newline. Of course the terminology is originally from type-writers so it doesn't have to make sense, but it does seem odd that some systems chose just CR.
  - chc 9y ago
    On a typewriter from around the time of the first Macs, the return key normally moves back to the beginning and moves down a line, so that's probably why they picked it. They also called the key "return" rather than "enter."
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      Strange that 'return' takes you to a new line, rather than returning you to the previous line. English!
      - doughj3 9y ago
        (Nevermind)
      - boomlinde 9y ago
        It's a simple mechanical artefact. Carriage return moves the paper carriage all the way to the right (returning it to its initial position), while line feed will advance the paper vertically (feeding a line through the carriage). With that in mind, line feed and carriage return on their own make about as little sense. On later type writers both the line feed and carriage return were integrated into a single key or lever, which was just called carriage return or return. From this perspective, an encoding using a lone CR for newlines might make more sense than one using a lone LF. But neither combination really makes intuitive sense in buffered, electronic systems. It's just how it is.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

shmerl 9y ago

Well, they could just apply a minimal cleanup for end lines before posting.

pvg 9y ago
Then the people who want to compile it rather than complain about it would have to go through an extra hoop to fix it again. They published it the right way.
- Skunkleton 9y ago
  Plus, if they replaced the ^Ms, what would we have to complain about? This truly is the best way. People can complain, and people can compile.
  - pvg 9y ago
    That is an excellent point although I suspect your question is going to be answered in spades when people notice who the developer posting the code is.
    - Skunkleton 9y ago
      I don't know anything about this developer?
- mrpippy 9y ago
  Agreed, at least make sure it will still compile with line endings changed before submitting pull requests. This builds with CodeWarrior 10 (from 1996) which is probably OK with non-Mac line endings, but there are other old Mac codebases on GitHub using older toolchains that require CR. (i.e. Pararena 2: http://bslabs.net/2016/11/13/building-pararena/ http://bslabs.net/2016/11/13/building-pararena/) A PPC Mac running OS X 10.4 is basically the only way to work with both git and classic Mac dev environments, I'll be trying this out myself.
  - vt240 9y ago
    I still have my Power MachTen CD. I used to love wasting time porting GNU/Linux source to that odd ball environment.
    - mrpippy 9y ago
      A year or two ago I built dropbear on Power MachTen, worked great and just needed a couple fixes to bring it back into compatibility with GCC 2.x. Playing around with Professional MachTen (for 68k) is a real trip though. 4.3BSD, an even older GCC, and it implements virtual memory and protection by taking over the system memory manager. (You actually have to restart when quitting it) It would be so cool to have something like MachTen on iOS, some people have tried but the restrictions on executable pages really restricts things.
monocasa 9y ago
Eh, I prefer when they don't clean up anything. It feels more like real archival work.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

k__ 9y ago

lol, I knew LF and CRLF was a thing, but only CR? Interesting :D

eterm 9y ago
Taken literally just CR seems very odd. You probably know this, but LF is "line feed" which advances the feed. CR is "carriage return" which puts the carridge to the start of the line. The combination makes sense because it does both, it returns the carriage and advances the line. Just LF kind of makes sense because when you advance the line you can think of the line being empty. But conceptually just CR suggests returning the carriage but that doesn't imply the newline. Of course the terminology is originally from type-writers so it doesn't have to make sense, but it does seem odd that some systems chose just CR.
- chc 9y ago
  On a typewriter from around the time of the first Macs, the return key normally moves back to the beginning and moves down a line, so that's probably why they picked it. They also called the key "return" rather than "enter."
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Strange that 'return' takes you to a new line, rather than returning you to the previous line. English!
    - doughj3 9y ago
      (Nevermind)
    - boomlinde 9y ago
      It's a simple mechanical artefact. Carriage return moves the paper carriage all the way to the right (returning it to its initial position), while line feed will advance the paper vertically (feeding a line through the carriage). With that in mind, line feed and carriage return on their own make about as little sense. On later type writers both the line feed and carriage return were integrated into a single key or lever, which was just called carriage return or return. From this perspective, an encoding using a lone CR for newlines might make more sense than one using a lone LF. But neither combination really makes intuitive sense in buffered, electronic systems. It's just how it is.

deleted 9y ago

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