From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Thorsten Jolitz Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Modern conventions for structuring Emacs Lisp libraries Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:51:28 +0200 Message-ID: <87zjqme41b.fsf@gmail.com> References: <87hacvn8sm.fsf@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1381078316 6536 80.91.229.3 (6 Oct 2013 16:51:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2013 16:51:56 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 06 18:52:01 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VSrYm-0001kx-DK for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:52:00 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55846 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VSrYm-0007hs-32 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:52:00 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:35677) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VSrYc-0007bb-Ht for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:51:56 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VSrYW-0006F0-8X for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:51:50 -0400 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:37763) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VSrYV-0006EU-QR for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:51:44 -0400 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VSrYS-0001aw-BT for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:51:40 +0200 Original-Received: from g231227116.adsl.alicedsl.de ([92.231.227.116]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:51:40 +0200 Original-Received: from tjolitz by g231227116.adsl.alicedsl.de with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:51:40 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 73 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: g231227116.adsl.alicedsl.de User-Agent: Gnus/5.130002 (Ma Gnus v0.2) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:p6VRSfYADMfwzPYFLyKoiN3W1Ic= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:163915 Archived-At: Richard Stallman writes: > [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider > [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, > [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. > > Regarding the file keywords, the change you've proposed has some fatal > flaws. > > | ;; ** MetaData > | ;; :PROPERTIES: > | ;; :copyright: Thorsten_Jolitz > | ;; :copyright-since: 2013 > | ;; :version: 0.9 > | ;; :licence: GPL3+ > | ;; :licence-url: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ > > It is legally inadequate, since it doesn't have a standard copyright > notice. A standard copyright notice looks like > > Copyright YEARS NAME > > It is inadequate for informing users about their rights, and the lack > of warranty, and about our philosophy, because it lacks the explicit > license notice which states those things. It may also be legally > insufficient for making the license clear. > > We want people to see these words in the source file: > > | ;; This file is part of GNU Emacs. > | > | ;; GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify > | ;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by > | ;; the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or > | ;; (at your option) any later version. > | > | ;; GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, > | ;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of > | ;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the > | ;; GNU General Public License for more details. > | > | ;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License > | ;; along with GNU Emacs. If not, see . > > This part has to be kept as it is. > > Those issues don't apply to the library header lines: > > | ;; Maintainer: FSF > | ;; Keywords: help, internal > | ;; Package: emacs > > We could change them if it is an improvement. However, I think your > format is worse for humans. We should not make it worse for humans > just to cater to programs that some people use. You can change the > programs instead. Indeed, until now I did not get much positive feedback about the looks of these property drawers in Elisp libraries, not even from Org-mode users - although they seem to be more suited for meta-data than just free text from a conceptual point of view. What would be really helpful, besides saner official recommendations for file structuring, would be an up-to-date official template for this meta-data section (maybe there is one out there but I missed it?). (Private) tools could then convert this template into (e.g.) easy to handle Org-mode syntax like above, and convert them back to more human readable traditional syntax before a library is added to some repo. -- cheers, Thorsten