Re: /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r101338: * lisp/emacs-lisp/syntax.el (syntax-ppss): More sanity check to catch

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> Cc: dak@gnu.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 17:15:33 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> The need to "come up, design and implement" these things has been there 
> >> for many years now. Unless things start moving in that direction 
> >> step-by-step, I'm not confident anything "proper" will happen at all.
> >
> > Nothing will start moving unless Someone(TM) will move things.
> 
> I'd expect each participant in the discussion to be willing to implement
> things they discuss that are within their area of expertise. E.g. Stefan
> to at least add that hook and modify the syntax-ppss caching behavior.

I think your expectations are a bit exaggerated.  You cannot possibly
expect of anyone who offers some idea to implement it.  People
implement ideas because they have an itch to scratch, not because they
just had the idea.

> > I hope
> > volunteers will eventually come and do that, or else Emacs will
> > continue to be what it is today.  My chiming into this thread was in
> > the hope that what I say will inspire someone.
> 
> I really don't do C, and learning it just to contribute to Emacs seems
> like a major undertaking.

First, C is a really simple language, and compilers nowadays are good
at diagnosing mistakes.

But even if you decide not to go that way, there are a lot of place to
contribute to the design and the Lisp portions of the implementation.
Even just formulating the requirements is a huge step forward, IMO.

> Likewise, I'm seeing a surge of users interested in writing Emacs Lisp.
> Less of that in the Emacs core, but hopefully the transition will come,
> too.
> 
> Why there aren't many new contributors capable and interested in
> implementing new features at the C level, your guess is as good as mine
> (probably better).

Actually, I don't see many new contributors that do it in Lisp,
either.  Sure, there's a lot of code being committed every day, but
awfully few features that really advance forward Emacs as the
programming environment.  E.g., witness the lack of any significant
progress in adding IDE features.