Re: Tabulated list recenter issue

[Ian Dunn <dunni@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii writes:

>> From: Ian Dunn <dunni@gnu.org>
>> Cc: Clément Pit-Claudel <cpitclaudel@gmail.com>,
>>  emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2017 21:10:33 -0400
>>
>> If there are people that like the current behavior (obviously you're one
>> of them), then I agree that my proposed changes should only be optional.
>
> IME, after enough years have passed over a certain behavior, we have
> no good ways of predicting whether someone or something out there
> depend on it.  In our "arrogance" (pardon my French) we tried from
> time to time to pretend that we do know, and changed the long-standing
> behavior in backward-incompatible ways, only to discover later that
> someone got hurt or that subtle hard-to-solve bugs emerged.
>
> In general, I think it makes sense, in such a veteran package, to
> always leave a "fire escape" for those who must have the old behavior,
> as a matter of principle.  We should realize that we can no longer
> change Emacs in arbitrary incompatible ways, not after 30-odd years of
> history and many veteran users who have certain habits burnt into
> their muscle memory.  We should make this part of our development
> practice.
>
> Thanks.

Having been on the receiving end of such changes, I wholeheartedly agree.

--
Ian Dunn