From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date) Date: 22 Apr 2002 12:49:20 +0900 Organization: The XEmacs Project Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <87n0vw2y0v.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019447485 11835 127.0.0.1 (22 Apr 2002 03:51:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 03:51:25 +0000 (UTC) Cc: xemacs-design@xemacs.org, 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 16zUrN-00034m-00 for ; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 05:51:25 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16zUrt-0000oh-00 for ; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 05:51:57 +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 16zUrB-0001au-00; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 23:51:13 -0400 Original-Received: from tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.98.109]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16zUq8-0001Y4-00 for ; Sun, 21 Apr 2002 23:50:08 -0400 Original-Received: from steve by tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 16zUpN-0004ki-00; Mon, 22 Apr 2002 12:49:21 +0900 Original-To: Terje Bless In-Reply-To: Original-Lines: 68 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.4 (Common Lisp) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/0.51 (Python 2.1.3 on Linux/i686) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:2973 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:2973 >>>>> "Terje" == Terje Bless writes: Terje> Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> If you refuse to learn, Many of the XEmacs developers who sympathize far more with you than he does (or, to be honest, me) are being silent for various reasons. So don't take Eli's position as completely representative. (And Eli isn't an XEmacs developer, but I can't say how representative he is of the emacs-devel crowd---note the cross-post.) Note that in many cases at XEmacs all it takes is one supporter in the core to get ideas implemented, too. Even if Hrvoje and I publically oppose suggestions, if Andy or Ben picks one up and decides to run with it (== write code), it very likely gets in. Terje> I'm just suggesting that one way to achieve your stated Terje> goal of bringing XEmacs to a wider audience is by lowering Terje> the price of admission. Right; I don't think anybody has missed that point. But one of the problems is that without more concrete suggestions it's hard to see how this could be done. It won't come for free; at the very minimum, some of the doc writers and editors will have to change perspective, a perspective which has historically been useful to the community. And it may be that other compromises need to be made. So please be patient with us, too: while we (as a group) may be far more expert than you on internals and advanced usage, few of us have thought very carefully about the kind of issues the changes you propose would require. Examples help. Terje> Ok. I'll try to come up with some specific suggestions and Terje> post them to xemacs-beta. Please post them here, to xemacs-design, if they are intended as examples of general fixes that should be made "in similar places where appropriate". If they are really bug reports, where a local fix would be fine, then post to xemacs-beta. At GNU Emacs, I guess the appropriate channel is emacs-devel, check with Eli. Terje> I've deliberately avoided getting into specifics because Terje> quite frankly I'm not _qualified_ to speak to them. But for the reasons mentioned above, nobody else is any more qualified. For example, consider Brady Montz's suggestion about adding xrefs to sort-* to the sort-lines docstring. While I oppose that particular suggestion, it did lead to the constructive alternative of suggesting the use of the idioms C-h a and C-h C-f in this context. (And I could change my mind, that was just my first take.) Note how that focuses the discussion far better than his original comment where he said "there are too few cross-references" and I misinterpreted that as "Brady rarely sees cross-references". Nothing wrong with what he wrote in the first case, either. Nor was my interpretation implausible. These issues are inherently hard to tease out. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.