Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > Richard, this is a very unfair characterization of what Perry has
  > been saying.  He's not changing the subject by talking about
  > features other than completion.

I said he took my words out of context.  I was responding to someone
else's message; we were talking about completion, nothing else.  He
reinterpreted my statement as about refactoring, which was the wrong
context for it.

It was also changing the subject.  The topic of this discussion is
completion.  Despite the messages some have posted about refactoring,
that's not the subject I am discussing.

Occasionally bringing up a different but related topic is not a bad
thing, but to do so persistently gets in the way.

  > Perry has very patiently explained how he *does* understand your
  > goals and shares them,

No matter how patient it was, it did not get at the issue at hand.

I believe he supports the free software goals at the deepest level.
The divergence comes at a level less deep.  He (along with others) is
lobbying for one decision, rather than helping me consider the
question carefully and make the right decision.

Indeed, that sort of lobby campaign urges me to skip the careful
thought and hastily adopt their conclusion.  I insist on doing this
slowly and carefully.

I need to go through these issues systematically, to ascertain what
options really exist and what their consequences are.  Right now I am
trying to understand the issue of completion.

Refactoring is a different issue.  I won't look at that issue until
(1) I am done with the completion issue -- and (2) I have learned the
basic facts about refactoring so that I CAN think about it.

Getting back to completion, some tried to dismiss the idea that
completion can be done with less than the full AST.  The discussion
convinces me that it can be done with somewhat less, but I want to
understand what data is needed for various kinds of completion, and
why.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.