bug#511: package for potential inclusion in emacs

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>]

>> However, there are a couple of doubts that make me hesitant to include
>> notes-mode in the main Emacs distribution.  Firstly, it's a moderately
>> sized package with multiple source files, including perl scripts; for
>> reasons of convenience and cleanliness, packages of a similar nature
>> tend to be distributed seperately from Emacs and not bundled with it
>> (e.g., AucTeX and preview-latex).  Secondly, there are a couple of
>> packages around that do a similar thing, such as John Wiegley's planner
>> mode.

Yes, I'd like to see a discussion about these modes from people who've
tried several and can hence talk about their experience.  It seems that
Dominik's Org mode is also relevant (especially since it's already
bundled with Emacs, contrary to planner).

One important aspect as well is whether the package is maintained.
AFAICT, John Wigley has been fairly quiet in the last few years, so I'm
not sure how well maintained is planner-mode.

> I certainly understand waintence concerns about dropping perl in to the
> emacs tree.  It was OK with rms when we talked about it around 2000
> (provided I make startup changes that were done in 2006), but things may
> have changed.

I don't think it's a big problem: it just means that your package won't
be usable (or at least not 100% functional) for those people without
Perl, or with an incompatible version.

>> Neither of these means that we can't ultimately include notes-mode, but
>> I'd prefer to take some time evaluating it and discussing it on
>> emacs-devel first.  I'm really sorry you've been waiting since 2006 (!),

Than let's do that now.


        Stefan