From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rustom Mody Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: configurable means hard? [was: ... easier explanation how to setup gnus ...] Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 10:14:51 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <05152b6c-07e5-4d6c-b4e2-3e9c9f5651eb@googlegroups.com> References: <5i61va9u7p.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <8761v9fp6k.fsf@abbey.wistly.net> <1851107a-51f8-4514-a47d-0d0a6ce4fc4b@default> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1376500517 19643 80.91.229.3 (14 Aug 2013 17:15:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 17:15:17 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Aug 14 19:15:20 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1V9efH-0000Bw-Ra for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:15:19 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:36358 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V9efH-0006UH-7a for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 14 Aug 2013 13:15:19 -0400 X-Received: by 10.224.13.136 with SMTP id c8mr11035742qaa.0.1376500492573; Wed, 14 Aug 2013 10:14:52 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.50.30.9 with SMTP id o9mr580740igh.11.1376500492415; Wed, 14 Aug 2013 10:14:52 -0700 (PDT) Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fx3no2475073qab.0!news-out.google.com!he10ni1979qab.0!nntp.google.com!fx3no2475064qab.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=59.95.15.10; posting-account=mBpa7woAAAAGLEWUUKpmbxm-Quu5D8ui Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 59.95.15.10 User-Agent: G2/1.0 Injection-Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 17:14:52 +0000 Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:200625 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:92892 Archived-At: On Wednesday, August 14, 2013 7:32:06 PM UTC+5:30, Stefan Monnier wrote: > > File > > - Why do I have five print options, and what's the difference? >=20 > Because Emacs doesn't offer a good way to print, so we offer various > workarounds (I wish I were kidding). Ha! Refreshing to hear some straight talk! > > Why can=92t we rename windows to panes and frames to windows? >=20 > We can, but it's hard: Emacs is structured in such a way that the user > is exposed to the names used in the code. So renaming windows to panes > means renaming functions and variables, which leads to backward > compatibility problems. A technical and a social aspect to this. Technical: Yeah, I see that its harder than I thought.... Still, taking a cue from python's 2to3 converter, it should be possible to = have a 24to25 converter that among other things looks up a table of old-nam= es and renames to new ones, for arbitrary elisp files. Yeah I understand t= hat presence of eval makes 100% coverage theoretically impossible. Of course I am not seriously suggesting that this one trivia is worth this = effort. Scale it up by the dozens of such oddities and the picture changes = somewhat. Brings me to the next... Social:=20 As analogy consider that at one time emacs only ran on unices. Porting to = windows -- hardly a core constituency!! -- would have driven the user popul= ation up by some factor, is it not? And then some of those folks become co= re devs. Likewise, reducing the combo of weirdness+steep learning curve (combined wi= th some good PR!) would bring some valuable people into the fold (IMHO)