Re: Emacs cvs newbie problems

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

[Pardon me, I don't have your original message, so I might be confused about
 what you're asking]

On Sat, Sep 14, 2002 at 09:24:52PM -0400, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
> I'm not really addressing a developer issue at the 'bug' level, or the 
> 'new feature' level.  This is a 'gestalt', 'weltanshauung' or 'paradigm' 
> issue.

Try asking specific questions.  You're more likely to get a response.

Do you have an actual package you want to install?  Note that Emacs comes
with many packages by default that are optional in xemacs, so you might not
need to do anything.

Many packages come with Makefiles, and you can just do configure/make
etc. just like a non-lisp program.  Packages that don't, are often so simple
that the answer is `drop it into the site-lisp directory'.  But as Luc said,
the answer may be different depending on what you what to do.

Once you installed a few things, you'll probably know what to do, and won't
need to ask anymore (until you run into some wierd-ass package that really is
hard to install -- but in that case it will probably be something strange that
simply doesn't follow the rules anyway).

[the rest of this is arguably flame-bait, so continue reading at your own risk]

> Here's something to think about:
[...cut...]

I'm not sure why you posted this list; all of the items you mentioned are so
different that there's really little you can say about them as a group, and
certainly comparing emacs with them seems rather pointless.

[java is a programming language definition; KDE provides only the basic
extensibility for users (and is not easy to install by any stretch of the
imagination); netscape provides almost no user extensibility at all
(`powerful'?); Linux kernel configuration -- `easy to use for the
uninitiated'?  Hint: no.]

-Miles
-- 
P.S.  All information contained in the above letter is false,
      for reasons of military security.