the FTP files

the FTP files

[Glenn Morris]

I don't think we need both FTP and etc/FTP, especially given that the
latter has just two lines of actual content (that just refer to a
web-page). Also, said webpage contains just two lines of text on the
subject of "obtaining GNU Emacs". That's pretty annoying - why not
just put the relevant text directly in the file?

With regards to the top-level FTP file:

I think we can lose the "UUCP" reference now...

In the Emacs section, we should explain that the Lisp Ref Manual is
distributed with Emacs from 22 onwards.

Does information about how to get Scheme and Tex really need to be in
the Emacs distribution?

Re: the FTP files

[Miles Bader]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:
> Does information about how to get Scheme and Tex really need to be in
> the Emacs distribution?

Well the filename "FTP" itself seems a bit out-of-date, but...

TeX seems relevant because Emacs uses it to produce printed
documentation.  However the ftp site mentioned in Emacs no longer works.
It would probably be more useful to just mention the typical tex
packages users might install from their OS distribution (I think
"texlive" and "tetex" are the main ones for unix-like systems), and then
maybe point at something like http://www.tug.org/ for more general
information.

Scheme, I dunno, but it seems to me it's only a few lines, and there's
some nostalgia value to keeping at least a small blurb.  Morever the ftp
site still works[*] (though the latest thing on there seems to be about
5 years old :-)!  [Hey, who doesn't like scheme?  :-]

The swiss-project's general scheme page might be a better thing to point
to; it has a well-written short introduction and a bunch of (reasonably
up-to-date) links to pages for mit-scheme, guile, etc.:

   http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/projects/scheme/


[*] Though the server there seems a bit funny, it didn't get along the
first ftp client I tried.

-Miles

-- 
We live, as we dream -- alone....

Re: the FTP files

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 11/28/06, Miles Bader <miles.bader@necel.com> wrote:
> [Hey, who doesn't like scheme?  :-]

Let me count the ways...

                    /L/e/k/t/u

Re: the FTP files

[Richard Stallman]

I think we should copy etc/FTP into FTP, and update the web page with
whatever information is appropriate.  Would you like to do that?

Since you have write access to Emacs sources, you have write access
to the web pages.  Use savannah.gnu.org:/webcvs/emacs.
Or you could send me the HTML that you suggest installing,
and I will install it.

    Does information about how to get Scheme and Tex really need to be in
    the Emacs distribution?

Scheme, no, but maybe TeX and Texinfo.  But instead of giving the info
about them, we should just link to other places where it is normally
available.

Re: the FTP files

[Glenn Morris]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> I think we should copy etc/FTP into FTP, and update the web page
> with whatever information is appropriate.

Did you mean "move" (and remove etc/FTP) here, or do you want two
files with the same contents?

Re: the FTP files

[Richard Stallman]

    > I think we should copy etc/FTP into FTP, and update the web page
    > with whatever information is appropriate.

    Did you mean "move" (and remove etc/FTP) here, or do you want two
    files with the same contents?

Let's keep etc/FTP in case anything points to it.
So we would have two files with the same (tiny) contents.