From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.xemacs.design,gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: INFO on add-ons Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 13:42:11 +0900 Organization: The XEmacs Project Sender: xemacs-design-admin@xemacs.org Message-ID: <874rd7wuos.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <3D728E82.8000808@cox.net> <87ptvxxkoj.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87fzwtxad9.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <3D73F6D1.7010002@cox.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1031028167 6281 127.0.0.1 (3 Sep 2002 04:42:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 04:42:47 +0000 (UTC) Cc: xemacs-design@xemacs.org Return-path: Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org ([207.96.1.200]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17m5WW-0001dC-00 for ; Tue, 03 Sep 2002 06:42:45 +0200 Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA16157; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 00:44:03 -0400 Original-Received: (from turnbull@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) id AAA08122 for xemacs-design-mailman@xemacs.org; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 00:43:17 -0400 Original-Received: (from mail@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) id AAA08059 for turnbull@tux.org; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 00:43:17 -0400 Original-Received: from tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.98.109]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA07891 for ; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 00:43:15 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ident=steve) by tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 17m5W2-0004pX-00 for ; Tue, 03 Sep 2002 13:42:14 +0900 Original-To: emacs-devel@gnu.org In-Reply-To: <3D73F6D1.7010002@cox.net> ("David A. Cobb"'s message of "Mon, 02 Sep 2002 19:40:01 -0400") Original-Lines: 66 User-Agent: Gnus/5.090007 (Oort Gnus v0.07) XEmacs/21.4 (Informed Management, i686-pc-linux) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/0.61 X-XEmacs-List: design Errors-To: xemacs-design-admin@xemacs.org X-BeenThere: xemacs-design@xemacs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.1 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Discussion of design and features for XEmacs. List-Unsubscribe: , Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.xemacs.design:1339 gmane.emacs.devel:7365 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:7365 >>>>> "David" == David A Cobb writes: David> I have no concept of anyone coercing a contributer in any David> regard - it'll cost you at least $30.00/hr to coerce /me/. Oh, I think requiring revision of a patch because it has sucky docstrings is both reasonable and coercive, and I doubt you would send me a bill. More like, "good grief, how could _I_ forget that!" :-) David> But it would be a considerable good if they did contribute David> Info pages Sure. But we can't require Info pages, especially as rms has pronounced against it. Note that GNU is much more strict about requiring docs when they are judged necessary than XEmacs. David> and if installing the software also installed the info. It does: bash$ fgrep .info /usr/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/pkginfo/MANIFEST.* | wc 165 165 13072 bash$ fgrep -l info /usr/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/pkginfo/MANIFEST.* | wc 42 42 2602 165 .info files in 42 (of 94) packages (and that omits Mule packages and the core). Yes, it's a shame that Swiss cheese has holes, but the part that isn't holes is pretty tasty, no? None of this is to deny that your perception of some problem is unjustified. But it's not obvious to me that either XEmacs or the upstream maintainers are falling down on the job here. David> My notion was more an encouraging word in the documents we David> publish to guide the potential contributer. There are plenty of those. See standards.info, for example. We could probably strengthen them. However, getting contributors to read those is like getting users to read NEWS or the FAQ. It's much more effective, and generally not taken too badly, for reviewers to use moral suasion and the occasional veto. David> I think a script to take the bugs out of installing is a David> positive good thing. Given your explanation of the points I didn't understand, I think (for XEmacs usage) everything you want is satisfied by (1) writing more Texinfo docs and (2) making more XEmacs packages. We already do all the installation and set up that you want. If there are instances where either the core code or an XEmacs package fails to install existing docs, that is a bug and I would appreciate a report. For (1), see my other post on "Extreme Documentation." The main place that (2) falls down is that XEmacs packages don't much care if their installation is useful to GNU Emacs or standalone Info readers. But setting INFOPATH=/path/to/xemacs-packages/info:$INFOPATH should do the trick (modulo our interpretation of dir as a cache rather than something that should be authoritative). -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN My nostalgia for Icon makes me forget about any of the bad things. I don't have much nostalgia for Perl, so its faults I remember. Scott Gilbert c.l.py