Re: Discoverability (was: Changes for 28)

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > As a sufferer under some of those changes, I am well aware of the
  > pain that such divergences cause the users. I acknowledge that
  > sometimes those changes need to be made for sake of consistency
  > with larger refactorings. However, the fact that they do happen should
  > be viewed as a failure of engineering and not an excuse for future failures.

Emacs is older than the operating systems people use today.
(It is almost as old as the first Unix, which barely resembled
the Unix of later decades.)  It is much older than Linux, the kernel.

The oldest design elements were not designed for the uses we make of
them today.  And since we wrote those, people have developed other
areas of software which don't fit Emacs very well.  So there are good
reasons to redesign some of them.

However, people actually use Emacs, so a greatly incompatible change
in Emacs is as unhinkable as a greatly incompatible change in the New
York City subway.

We have to build new lines through the maze of underground pipes and
cables.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)