Re: First draft of the Emacs website

[Random832 <random832@fastmail.com>]

Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Nov 29, 2015, at 11:19, Alex Dunn <dunn.alex@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is Aquamacs still popular?  The Emacs subreddit links to
>> http://emacsformacosx.com, which I had never heard of before.  Homebrew
>> also provides a decent experience on OS X, though I’m biased since I’m a
>> maintainer.
>
> Aquamacs is popular but it seems to me that linking to homebrew would
> be closer to the expectations of Emacs users on OSX.
>
> Jean-Christophe Helary

The advantage [to the extent that it is an advantage] of the version at
emacsformacosx.com is that it is a self-contained binary distribution
not requiring one to open a terminal and paste magic shell scripts, but
a more or less standard build (vs Aquamacs which is a fairly extensive
patch set).

One disadvantage (well, technically I haven't examined whether any of
the others do anything about this) is that it doesn't do anything to
ensure that "emacs" from the terminal won't run the ancient bundled
Emacs (still 22, I think the last time this came up the theory was that
Apple balked at the GPLv3).

It might be best to have the OSX button to go to a landing page that
outlines all of these options. An off-site link with no explanation
isn't going to inspire confidence at any rate; even if there's no
discussion of options a landing page with "OSX builds are not provided
directly by the FSF, but Emacs is available through [link]Homebrew[/]"
would be a better transition.