Re: New Emacs with GTK!

[Michael Powe <michael@trollope.org>]

>>>>> "Niels" == Niels Freimann <nfreimann@firemail.de> writes:

    Niels> Dear Lucien, I do not subscribe to any claim about a
    Niels> renaissance of the text console. Nevertheless if you and
    Niels> others persist on an ncurses emacs then why not splitting
    Niels> emacs into gtk and ncurses applications, sharing display
    Niels> unrelated code via libraries, and removing all the motif,
    Niels> .., code forever ?

and again, what is the point of forking the code, and reducing the
number of systems on which it can be used?  so you can have a pretty
desktop?  from a maintenance standpoint, having two versions of the
same software, and having to update two versions simultaneously, makes
absolutely no sense whatever.  it would be a nightmare.

    Niels> However one thing must be clear: Any future development
    Niels> must place gtk into the very center. emacs must become
    Niels> fully compatible with modern desktop environments. It must
    Niels> provide all the dialogs known to the people by other GUI
    Niels> programs, and any relicts of the text mode past must
    Niels> disappear. Emacs must look and feel like any other gnome,
    Niels> kde, or window, application.

well, it may be clear to you, but it sure isn't clear to me.  i use
emacs as an editor.  i don't know what you're doing with it.  admiring
it on your desktop, apparently.  and i completely reject the notion
that anyone "must" make their products "look like windows."  if i
wanted to use windows, i would USE windows.  one of the main strengths
of using unix/linux is that you can have a CHOICE of desktop and work
environments.  i fervently hope that your notion that we should all be
required to use gnome, kde or windows utterly fails to find an
audience.

i sincerely hope that future development continues to focus on
improving its editing capabilities and makes its potential as a
desktop bauble secondary.

and i may as well add that a good deal of the improvement of emacs
over the years has come from the userbase, which has contributed
hundreds, probably thousands of elisp packages that extend the
functionality of the base editor.  such as this newsreader, gnus. 

mp

-- 
  Michael Powe                                 Waterbury, CT USA
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded,
authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded,
flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as
soon be left to mind their own fucking business." - R.U. Sirius