Re: How to make emacs auto-recognize utf-8 encoded files upon visiting

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Charles Muller <acmuller@gol.com> writes:
> I noticed a good bit of negative reaction toward TEI-Emacs when I
> first mentioned it, where people expressed alarm about the TEI people
> not caring about the about the GPL and not reporting to the GNU
> development team.  I think that these concerns come as a result of
> people not really checking into what the package is, and what it does.
> It is not a new version of Emacs, such as XEmacs.  It is simply an
> add-on, that contains mode enhancements, and some of its own new
> modes--just the way people are accustomed to adding on calendar modes,
> e-mail packages, or whatever.

It's perfectly fine for groups such as the TEI to have such add-on
packages, and it's certainly not necessary for them to `write to the GNU
development team and then wait for a future version for it to be
implemented.'

However, for people who have developed big packages, I think it would be
a good thing to try to maintain some sort of `loose contact' (and maybe
they have done so, I don't know), just so that people know what's out
there, and perhaps can avoid duplicating the work they've done.  If
some of their stuff is of general utility, often it can be merged into
the emacs distribution, which will lessen the maintenance burden.

For instance the problem with unicode font coverage you mentioned is a
apparently a big annoyance for the people developing the `real' unicode
version of emacs.

I think that in the case of many big packages (e.g. `semantic'), there's
a general awareness in the emacs community that they exist, so formal
contact isn't necassary.  I hadn't heard of the TEI work though.

-Miles
-- 
We live, as we dream -- alone....