> There are good arguments on both sides of the fence.
(For by-hand and automated installation scripts, that is.)
> Now what we need to do is find the good arguments and merge them
> neatly.  A "configure"-like startup would probably not be all that
> bad an idea.  It has its own ideas of defaults BUT IT LETS YOU CHANGE
> THEM.  "Hints", I think configure calls them.

Yes...but be careful.  I once had a run-in with a configure script.  In
most respects it was a very nice configure script; the problem I had
was that it absolutely refused to believe me when I told it what the
path to cpp was.  This is an anathema to me; I want some way to tell it
"dammit, I don't care how (un)reasonable you think it is, use what I
tell you to use".  (In this case, it turned out, on reading the script,
that it was trying to verify that the program given actually worked as
a cpp, and was expecting _exactly_ a certain byte sequence on output
for some test input, and the cpp I gave it was producing different
whitespace.)

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu