Question about updating ascii.el file on the wiki

Question about updating ascii.el file on the wiki

[Steven W. Orr]

There's  great little module I keep in my arsenal called ascii.el

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ascii.el

It hasn't been updated since Apr 5, '07. When I compile it under 23.1.1, it
complained about a few obsolete functions, so, I look the liberty of fixing them.

In the spirit of giving back, should I upload it under a new filename? Or do I
need to contact the author and hope he's still alive? Does anyone care?

TIA

-- 
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RE: Question about updating ascii.el file on the wiki

[Drew Adams]

> There's  great little module I keep in my arsenal called ascii.el
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ascii.el
> 
> It hasn't been updated since Apr 5, '07. When I compile it 
> under 23.1.1, it complained about a few obsolete functions,
> so, I look the liberty of fixing them.
> 
> In the spirit of giving back, should I upload it under a new 
> filename? Or do I need to contact the author and hope he's
> still alive? Does anyone care?

I would recommend contacting Vinicius (the author and maintainer in this case)
with your patch.  He's pretty good about updating to fix problems you point out.

Contacting the author/maintainer makes him/her aware of the problem and the
proposed fix.  It means the fix will be made at the source, so it is more likely
to be applied everywhere the library might be posted.  It is also courteous and
respectful of the copyright.

If you try but cannot locate the author/maintainer, that's a different story.
In that case, I'd suggest applying your fix but commenting it well with your
name and date.  That helps users understand which version they have and how it
got that way.

Be aware too that sometimes using an "obsolete" function might still be the
right thing for some library.  Also, replacing an "obsolete" function by a newer
one that is not available for older Emacs versions can break the code for use in
those versions.  The author/maintainer might prefer to use code that is
conditional in such a case.  In sum, updating wrt "obsolete" functions is not
necessarily cut-and-dried.

Re: Question about updating ascii.el file on the wiki

[Tim X]

"Steven W. Orr" <steveo@syslang.net> writes:

> There's  great little module I keep in my arsenal called ascii.el
>
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ascii.el
>
> It hasn't been updated since Apr 5, '07. When I compile it under 23.1.1, it
> complained about a few obsolete functions, so, I look the liberty of fixing them.
>
> In the spirit of giving back, should I upload it under a new filename? Or do I
> need to contact the author and hope he's still alive? Does anyone care?
>

the polite thing to do is to try and contact the author and provide him
with diffs he can apply. However, frequently an author of some small
utility has moved on and is no longer interested in maintaining the
code or cannot be contacted, which then leaves you with various options
depending on what sort of license the code is under. 

If the code is under an appropriate open source license, you can
probably modify it and make your updated version available without too
many problems. Note that some licenses will require that you make the
original available somewhere as well. 

In general, for small utility type bits of code like you refer to, I
think most people are fairly reasonable. As long as you can show you
made reasonable attempts to contact the author and get the changes added
and as long as you make sure the author is credited in any new version,
you will likely be OK and will have done the right thing. Of course,
this assumes the world is populated by reasonable people, which
unfortunately all too often, it isn't. 

Tim




-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au