From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: installing emacs and X11 on OS X Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 08:00:59 +0200 (IST) Sender: help-gnu-emacs-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035785065 27330 80.91.224.249 (28 Oct 2002 06:04:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 06:04:25 +0000 (UTC) Return-path: Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18630h-00076e-00 for ; Mon, 28 Oct 2002 07:04:23 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10) id 1862xn-0006AS-00; Mon, 28 Oct 2002 01:01:23 -0500 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.10) id 1862xN-00061D-00 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 28 Oct 2002 01:00:57 -0500 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.10) id 1862xK-00060t-00 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 28 Oct 2002 01:00:56 -0500 Original-Received: from is.elta.co.il ([199.203.121.2]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10) id 1862xJ-00060V-00 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 28 Oct 2002 01:00:54 -0500 Original-Received: from is (is [199.203.121.2]) by is.elta.co.il (8.9.3/8.8.8) with SMTP id IAA09251 for ; Mon, 28 Oct 2002 08:00:59 +0200 (IST) X-Sender: eliz@is Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org In-Reply-To: Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:3001 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help:3001 On 27 Oct 2002, Thomas F. Burdick wrote: > This doesn't let me differentiate between Carbon-Emacs on OS X, and > X11-Emacs on the same OS. system-type is darwin on both, and > display-graphic-p is t on both. However, it makes a lot of sense (to > me) that someone might want to make the Carbon one behave more like a > Carbon application, and the X11 one behave like an X11 application. If there's a difference between these two configurations, there should be a way to distinguish between them. Doesn't system-configuration fit the bill? or maybe system-configuration-options? > Out of curiosity, why is it depricated? Because people abuse it where > specific feature tests would be better? Yes. And that makes application code, including users' .emacs, bitrot alot when functionality of some window-system changes due to development. I already mentioned the problem with .emacs files that assumed window-system being nil means no colors. > If so, that seems like a bad > reason ... people can abuse anything People will abuse less if they have less opportunities for abuse. > but AFAIK, window-system is the > only way to determine what window system you're on. A small study into the uses of window-system in Emacs's own code that we did shows that it is used to test for a small number of features, but those features are implicit: they are neither stated clearly in the code nor even clearly understood in some cases. So it seems like window-system is a powerful tool for obfuscating Lisp code. By contrast, the explicit predicates such as display-multi-font-p actually say exactly what is the feature that's being tested. And the maintenance effort needed to keep a small number of predicates in sync with Emacs development is much less than what would be needed to go through all the *.el files and modify them whenever some window-system gets an extra feature it didn't have before. As an example, consider a future development of drop-down menus on a character terminal. > Or is there a > plan to replace this with a more competant introspection api? Such a plan is already in place: those are the display-*-p predicates advertized by NEWS in the same item which says window-system should not be used. > [ It would be cool to be able to have something like a window-system-p > function, so I could ask (window-system-p 'carbon) or > (window-system-p 'x11) or (window-system-p 'gtk). I think system-configuration and/or system-configuration-options should allow you to do this.