Emacs Windows FAQ

Emacs Windows FAQ

[Richard Stallman]

I added a section explaining why we support Emacs on Windows,
in the source emacs/windows/faq-source/faq.texi.
Can someone please DTRT to regenerate the other formats?

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Deniz Dogan]

2010/9/25 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:
> I added a section explaining why we support Emacs on Windows,
> in the source emacs/windows/faq-source/faq.texi.
> Can someone please DTRT to regenerate the other formats?
>

Why do we need to explain this?

-- 
Deniz Dogan

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 22:57:22 -0400
> 
> I added a section explaining why we support Emacs on Windows,
> in the source emacs/windows/faq-source/faq.texi.
> Can someone please DTRT to regenerate the other formats?

That FAQ has become obsolete a long time ago.  Most of its information
is outdated and misleading.  In particular, many "problems" it
mentions were solved in the stock Emacs sources long ago.  IMO, this
FAQ should be simply removed from the GNU Emacs site.

The Emacs FAQ is maintained as part of Emacs, in docs/misc/faq.texi.
If you want, we could include the text you wrote in the Emacs FAQ.

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Glenn Morris]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> I added a section explaining why we support Emacs on Windows,
> in the source emacs/windows/faq-source/faq.texi.
> Can someone please DTRT to regenerate the other formats?

I fixed a grammatical error ('It is not our goal to "helping Windows
users"'), ran `make html', and committed the modified files.

(As has been pointed out, that document seems rather out of date.)

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Richard Stallman]

    > I added a section explaining why we support Emacs on Windows,
    > in the source emacs/windows/faq-source/faq.texi.
    > Can someone please DTRT to regenerate the other formats?

    Why do we need to explain this?

So that people don't get the wrong idea that our
distribution of Windows binaries means using Windows is
legitimate.

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Richard Stallman]

    The Emacs FAQ is maintained as part of Emacs, in docs/misc/faq.texi.
    If you want, we could include the text you wrote in the Emacs FAQ.

Please do copy that text to there.
But don't delete it from the Emacs Windows FAQ now.

I don't have any opinion about deleting the entire Emacs Windows FAQ.
If it is totally obsolete, maybe we should delete it entirely.
But unless/until that occurs, please leave my added text in it.

Would someone like to go through it looking for whatever parts 
are still useful, and copy those parts elsewhere?

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Uday S Reddy]

On 9/25/2010 8:40 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> That FAQ has become obsolete a long time ago.  Most of its information
> is outdated and misleading.  In particular, many "problems" it
> mentions were solved in the stock Emacs sources long ago.  IMO, this
> FAQ should be simply removed from the GNU Emacs site.

I would prefer if you keep it around but perhaps add a note at the top saying that parts of it may be out of date.

Just the other day, I answered somebody's query in emacs.help newsgroup by referring to the FAQ.  It didn't give him the right answer, but it pointed him in the right direction.  The FAQ still has tons of information that I don't find anywhere else.

If you need somebody to maintain it, I am glad to take it on.

Oh, and, Thanks to Richard for explaining the reason why Emacs is supported on Windows.  I didn't know there was such a coherent reason.  Like I was saying this morning, free software developers don't have to explain anything.  But it is nice when they do.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@cs.bham.ac.uk>
> Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:51:12 +0100
> 
> On 9/25/2010 8:40 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > That FAQ has become obsolete a long time ago.  Most of its information
> > is outdated and misleading.  In particular, many "problems" it
> > mentions were solved in the stock Emacs sources long ago.  IMO, this
> > FAQ should be simply removed from the GNU Emacs site.
> 
> I would prefer if you keep it around but perhaps add a note at the top saying that parts of it may be out of date.
> 
> Just the other day, I answered somebody's query in emacs.help newsgroup by referring to the FAQ.  It didn't give him the right answer, but it pointed him in the right direction.

What was the issue, and why wouldn't it be more useful if it were
described in the Emacs FAQ instead?

> The FAQ still has tons of information that I don't find anywhere else.

Like what?

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Mathias Dahl]

> What was the issue, and why wouldn't it be more useful if it were
> described in the Emacs FAQ instead?

I haven't looked at that FAQ recently but I know it was a gold mine
back when I started using Emacs under Windows back in the late 1990's.

However, I agree with Eli because since then, Emacs on Windows has
really catched up (for example, there is now a working Emacs server
and client so no need for Gnuserv anymore) and maybe now the special
tricks and tips needed could be moved to the manual or the general
Emacs FAQ. Today, most of the things that does not work as well as
under GNU/Linux have to do with external programs not being in place
by default (grep, find, diff etc).

/Mathias

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Uday S Reddy]

On 10/7/2010 5:02 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> Just the other day, I answered somebody's query in emacs.help newsgroup by referring to the FAQ.  It didn't give him the right answer, but it pointed him in the right direction.
>
> What was the issue, and why wouldn't it be more useful if it were
> described in the Emacs FAQ instead?

The question was where to find the .emacs file on Windows.  I went to the Windows Emacs FAQ, as I have always done for such issues, but the answer there was probably out of date.  So, it wasn't right but it gave ideas to the user as to where else he might look.

I have now checked the Emacs FAQ, which doesn't have an answer to the question, but the Appendix G of the Emacs manual does.  So, the FAQs could perhaps give a pointer to the Appendix G, without giving a direct answer themselves.

Your original proposal was to "simply remove" the Windows Emacs FAQ from the web site.  If you want to amend that to say, transfer all the information to Emacs FAQ and *then* remove it from the web site, I would obviously have no objection.  But, who is going to do it?

Another factor that concerns me is that the Windows Emacs FAQ is not just an Emacs FAQ.  It also answers questions about how to integrate Emacs with other components of the "GNU operating system" on Windows or even the "Windows operating system".  For instance, questions like how do I unpack the distribution, how do I get it to work with Internet Explorer, and so on.  Do you want to put all such information on the general Emacs FAQ?

A third factor is that the Windows Emacs FAQ was produced by a community of users who knew exactly what the issues were.  It is very hard, if not impossible, for developer teams produce such FAQs because they think in an entirely different plane.

I have been in a lot of situations where sys-admins got rid of documentation produced by user teams because they were supposedly "obsolete", but they ended up replacing them with other documentation which was way inferior.  (They of course thought they were superior. :-)

Cheers,
Uday

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Lennart Borgman]

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 10/7/2010 5:02 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
>>> Just the other day, I answered somebody's query in emacs.help newsgroup
>>> by referring to the FAQ.  It didn't give him the right answer, but it
>>> pointed him in the right direction.
>>
>> What was the issue, and why wouldn't it be more useful if it were
>> described in the Emacs FAQ instead?
>
> The question was where to find the .emacs file on Windows.  I went to the
> Windows Emacs FAQ, as I have always done for such issues, but the answer
> there was probably out of date.  So, it wasn't right but it gave ideas to
> the user as to where else he might look.
>
> I have now checked the Emacs FAQ, which doesn't have an answer to the
> question, but the Appendix G of the Emacs manual does.  So, the FAQs could
> perhaps give a pointer to the Appendix G, without giving a direct answer
> themselves.
>
> Your original proposal was to "simply remove" the Windows Emacs FAQ from the
> web site.  If you want to amend that to say, transfer all the information to
> Emacs FAQ and *then* remove it from the web site, I would obviously have no
> objection.  But, who is going to do it?
>
> Another factor that concerns me is that the Windows Emacs FAQ is not just an
> Emacs FAQ.  It also answers questions about how to integrate Emacs with
> other components of the "GNU operating system" on Windows or even the
> "Windows operating system".  For instance, questions like how do I unpack
> the distribution, how do I get it to work with Internet Explorer, and so on.
>  Do you want to put all such information on the general Emacs FAQ?
>
> A third factor is that the Windows Emacs FAQ was produced by a community of
> users who knew exactly what the issues were.  It is very hard, if not
> impossible, for developer teams produce such FAQs because they think in an
> entirely different plane.
>
> I have been in a lot of situations where sys-admins got rid of documentation
> produced by user teams because they were supposedly "obsolete", but they
> ended up replacing them with other documentation which was way inferior.
>  (They of course thought they were superior. :-)

How about moving this to EmacsWiki? The reason for having it in an
official Emacs place is that it should be more correct there, but if
this in fact does not work now then perhaps moving it to EmacsWiki
might be a better option.

If that happens I would however still suggest that someone is
officially responsible for that particular page on EmacsWiki and
corresponds with contributors to really keep it correct.

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Uday S Reddy]

On 10/7/2010 10:39 AM, Lennart Borgman wrote:

> How about moving this to EmacsWiki?

Again, who is going to do it?  I don't know if there are tools for translating html to Emacswiki (oddmuse or whatever it is) but, even if there were, some significant hand tuning would still be required.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@cs.bham.ac.uk>
> Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 10:33:00 +0100
> 
> Your original proposal was to "simply remove" the Windows Emacs FAQ from the web site.

That wasn't what I suggested.

> If you want to amend that to say, transfer all the information to Emacs FAQ and *then* remove it from the web site, I would obviously have no objection.

_This_ is what I suggested.

> But, who is going to do it?

Some volunteer, as usual.

> Another factor that concerns me is that the Windows Emacs FAQ is not just an Emacs FAQ.  It also answers questions about how to integrate Emacs with other components of the "GNU operating system" on Windows or even the "Windows operating system".  For instance, questions like how do I unpack the distribution, how do I get it to work with Internet Explorer, and so on.  Do you want to put all such information on the general Emacs FAQ?

Sure, why not?  The Emacs FAQ already contains similar info.

> A third factor is that the Windows Emacs FAQ was produced by a community of users who knew exactly what the issues were.  It is very hard, if not impossible, for developer teams produce such FAQs because they think in an entirely different plane.

??? Aren't the "developer team" also users of Emacs on Windows who
need to overcome these difficulties (and have done so)?

> I have been in a lot of situations where sys-admins got rid of documentation produced by user teams because they were supposedly "obsolete", but they ended up replacing them with other documentation which was way inferior.

Only someone who doesn't know my views well can suggest that this is
my drift.  You will find a lot of my messages where I _object_ to
removing support for seemingly-"obsolete" features, platforms, etc.
Heck, I'm the one who insists on maintaining the DOS port of Emacs,
remember?

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 11:39:12 +0200
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> How about moving this to EmacsWiki?

IMO, we will be in very bad shape if such important issues are to be
found only on the wiki.  A project that is documented as well as Emacs
is should have all the important pieces of info bundled.

> The reason for having it in an
> official Emacs place is that it should be more correct there, but if
> this in fact does not work now then perhaps moving it to EmacsWiki
> might be a better option.

Bad outdated information is still bad outdated information, even if we
move it to the wiki.  Keeping it out of sight doesn't make it better.

Re: Emacs Windows FAQ

[Uday S Reddy]

On 10/7/2010 3:02 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>
>> If you want to amend that to say, transfer all the information to Emacs FAQ and *then* remove it from the web site, I would obviously have no objection.
>
> _This_ is what I suggested.
>
>> But, who is going to do it?
>
> Some volunteer, as usual.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.  I will be quite happy if the Windows Emacs FAQ gets integrated into the Emacs FAQ.

Cheers,
Uday