Re: Software/HD ecology (was Re:...Bug in Emacs 21.3.50)

["Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu>]

I fail like I can't have a rational argument because you keep shifting
the focus from one issue to another.  For example you say:
 
> Obviously, I have failed to express myself. As you said, emacs has
> close to 3,000 files. If I install ten similarly large packages, that
> is 30,000 files. I don't want to get to know them personally. What I
> want is to be able to install and uninstall such packages cleanly and
> safely.

Which I addressed with:

>> All under the single `Emacs.app' directory.  Seems clean enough to me.

But then you replied by shifting to yet-another point:

> I mentioned that as a different kind of bug: 3 files where 1 is needed,
> 16 MB of wasted space.

As for:

> At present the languages number in 10's but soon it may be 100's. I am
> glad they are included. It is not clutter in the *distribution*, but it
> becomes clutter in my *system* if I am stuck with it all with no tools
> to safely select *my* language(s).

What's clutterish about them ?  Have you bothered to take a look
at the lisp/languages directory I mentioned earlier ?

Why does this support for other languages bother you, whereas support
for TPU-emulation, RMail, Simula, etc... doesn't ?  Do you intend to learn
Simula ?

> An analogy might be to ship a fat distribution with binaries for every
> cpu architecture and OS, and expect a user to keep everything because
> it is a lot of work to separate them. That would be stupid. IMHO it
> would be equally stupid to force people to keep 100's of languages they
> have no prayer of learning/understanding/needing in one lifetime.

I can see it as waste, but I still completely fail to see what's clutterish
about it.  The only thing I understand is that you have no clue where
to find what in all those files.  Whether that's bad or not depends on how
much effort you've put into it.


        Stefan