From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Juanma Barranquero Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: ehelp woes, or why I hate a module that I love so much Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 09:58:50 +0200 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <20020704092157.4CB2.LEKTU@terra.es> References: <20020702170220.5C0A.LEKTU@terra.es> <200207032057.g63KvPu04703@aztec.santafe.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1025771413 18163 127.0.0.1 (4 Jul 2002 08:30:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 08:30:13 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 17Q20D-0004iq-00 for ; Thu, 04 Jul 2002 10:30:13 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 17Q267-0002Mn-00 for ; Thu, 04 Jul 2002 10:36:19 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17Q1XD-0006Kr-00; Thu, 04 Jul 2002 04:00:15 -0400 Original-Received: from [62.22.27.141] (helo=mail.peoplecall.com) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 17Q1Vs-0006Dj-00; Thu, 04 Jul 2002 03:58:52 -0400 Original-Received: from [62.22.27.143] (jbarranquero.ofi.peoplecall.com [62.22.27.143] (may be forged)) by mail.peoplecall.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g647wne13506; Thu, 4 Jul 2002 09:58:50 +0200 Original-To: rms@gnu.org In-Reply-To: <200207032057.g63KvPu04703@aztec.santafe.edu> X-Mailer: Becky! ver. 2.05 Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:5444 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:5444 On Wed, 3 Jul 2002 14:57:25 -0600 (MDT), Richard Stallman wrote: > In terms of benefit for *all* users, this is at least a thousand times > as important as any work on ehelp. Maybe a hundred thousand times as > important. Yeah, well, with that logic we all should sort together the TODO in order of decreasing importance and start implementing things from the top down, never stepping aside nor jumping over boring things... But that kind of situation tends to make developers lose interest really fast. How many have left Emacs development because the things they were interested in are (sometimes actively) discouraged? And, with your argument, what's the relative importance of integrating Guile, when Emacs already has a fine and tested extension language? Why replace something that works, instead of focusing on developing new features more oriented towards the *user*, as oposed as the developer (who's the only one that will, perhaps, get any improvement from Guile)? The hundred of thousands of users implied in your message aren't interested in programming Emacs, just using it and customizing it (through Customize). Fixing/expanding desktop.el and figuring a way to save and restore sessions in a proper and well-defined way is a lot more useful to them that half the items in etc/TODO. I'm not trying to be polemic here, just pointing out that we don't have a clear-cut model of development where it is perfectly clear what's important and what's not. Perhaps we need it, I don't know. Maybe we should establish a Master Plan and start assigning tasks and actively pursuing them. But meanwhile, every fix and every improvement that does not conflict with the Emacs philosophy and that makes the developer feel proud is good in my view, even if it seems insignificant. Yesterday I spent two hours hunting down typos. I'm *sure* most Emacs users won't ever notice, but personally I feel a lot more confortable when I do C-h C-f some-function and don't see mispellings in its docstring. With your view, I should be ashamed of spending the time on this, instead of doing some worthwhile work. Sure internationalizing Emacs is a lot more important than hacking ehelp. OTOH, perhaps I'm able to fix ehelp's problems by myself but I wouldn't be able to gettextize Emacs unless I have the help of a more experienced developer... Anyway, if an expert with some knowledge of gettext plans to start internationalizing Emacs in the near future, I promise to help in that as much as I can. /L/e/k/t/u