Re: RFC: Flavors - naming significant sets of customizations

[Jambunathan K <kjambunathan@gmail.com>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> So what are you saying, someone would perform that deep
> surgery (to get a non-hack cua), and this would be an
> Emacs "suite"?

Let me give you some historical perspective.

Story of Orgmode
===============

I will give you an example of Org-mode.  It started out as a simple
library - outline-magic.el.  The author - Carsten Dominik - was happy
with outline.el but unhappy with the default keybindings.

He wrote outline-magic.el and instead of keeping it in his hard disk or
putting on github he kept improving it and evolving it.

Orgmode became a monster.

Orgmode became useful but since it was an evolved software - (i.e, a war
veteran, having memory of what works or what didn't, what is needed and
what not) - it had it's limitations.  It was like my Grandma's house
having memories of her times, her children't times and her
grandchildren's times.

So, Nicolas Goaziou comes in and builds upon existing knowledge and
experiences, canonicalizes the syntax and makes the exporters robust.
Now this work is unlike what Carsten or earlier people did.

It is an upfront design or with little or minor deviations from start to
finish.

So, the original Orgmode which was started out as an evening walk turned
in to a pleasant jog and occasionally became a fartlek (with a mix of
intensive workouts interspersed with plain walk)

The later effort is like a competititve marathon - intensive in both
spatial and temporal sense.

The Software Engineering Books call this Iterative Development and
Waterfall models.

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Story of Emacswiki (as told by Jambunathan)
===========================================

Unlike Orgmode, the Emacswiki effort is like a pleasant long walk from
southern pole to the northern pole.  No purpose.

It is a waterfall, nevertheless.  "Community Effort" and "No Control"
was right there when it started and continues to this day (even after a
decay).

The waterfall here is not a Niagara but a Bridal Veil.

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> That doesn't really synch with those examples
> Jambunathan K provided. Those actually sound exactly
> like the Linux distros: repackage the same thing (over
> and over again) based on the different behaviour of the
> (segmented) user base.

If one cannot bring in intensity one can atleast bring in patience and
perseverance.  One no valuable than the other.

People who have a sense of history - those who have seen a oak tree - in
a frivolous seed - add water and remove weeds and more importantly
refrain from uprooting the seed out of the soil.

So, try it out or just note it in diary.  Someone who proposes may be
weak heart and may never start out his journey if he finds no
encouragement.

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