[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#665847: Bug#665847: sbuild: Please add option to use plain ASCII characters in graphics

[jaalto]

On 2012-03-26 19:31, Roger Leigh wrote:
| On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 06:32:38PM +0300, Jari Aalto wrote:
| > The output of sbuild is difficult to handle because the graphical boxes it
| > draws are not plain
| > 
| >     +-------------------------+
| >     |                         |
| >     | ASCII representation    |
| >     |                         |
| >     +-------------------------+
| > 
| > Please add option to choose the output format e.g. with
| > 
| >     --ascii
| > 
| > So that the content can be saved and copy/pasted as plain/text (US-ASCII
| > encoded).
| 
| We can certainly look at doing this.  However, I would be interested
| to know what difficulties you are experiencing, since this was not
| mentioned in the report.
| 
| The box drawing characters are not particularly special--they are
| just UTF-8, which is well supported on Debian for over a decade now.
| If there are any tools which are not working with UTF-8, it would be
| very helpful to know which they are.

Copying text from this output to other places (mail messages, personal
book keeping files) etc.

Those destination may be text/plain US-ASCII and not UTF-8. 

I don't personally usually save or use UTF-8 unless it's absolutely
necessary; would much more prefer plain ASCII for shell based output
that can be the manipulated with standards tools. E.g. I'm not sure how
awk(1) would handle matching text inside those UTF-8 boxes.

Good to hear that --ascii option is under consideration,
Jari