Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Eric!

On Mon, Dec 31, 2007 at 08:07:12AM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:

> The old-timers on this list should be asking themselves why, when Emacs
> is so undeniably important, it can't attract as many developers as a
> mere fantasy game.

A few suggestions:
o - Emacs is implemented in a wierd special purpose language.

o - Emacs is already so good that it's difficult to see room for new
  features.  

o - Much core Emacs code has, despite RMS's good sense and emphasis on
  simplicity, become tortuous and difficult to get into.

o - Emacs is a victim of its own success - as its new features make it
  steadily easier to use, it becomes steadily more intricate and thus
  harder to learn.  A non-user of Emacs cannot become an Emacs hacker.

[ .... ]

> The Emacs project, though, is still operating at a scale and tempo I
> think of as being typical of the late 1980s and early 1990s.  I think
> we are limited by poor tools, and by habits of thought derived from
> those poor tools.

Hmmm.  There's something ironic about an Emacs developer blaming poor
tools.  ;-)

I'd think it's worth emphasising that CVS is _NOT_ a poor tool; it's an
exceptionally flexible, solid and reliable one, free from feature bloat,
and I'm grateful indeed to the hackers who've maintained it over the
decades.

What you mean, Eric, is that CVS is a hammer, and we could now work
better by using screws rather than nails.  What's the best screwdriver?

I've never been able to get excited by VCSs; apart from CVS, I've only
had experience with proprietary VCSs, and they have, with one exception,
been ghastly.

> I'd like to help that change.

I'm enthusiastic about this.  Go for it, Eric!  But I suggest the
following two constraints for the new tools, which might not apply to
Battle for Wesnoth:

o - They must support "batch mode" working, for RMS and others who
  concentrate fiercely on a single activity at a time.

o - They must, like Emacs, be fully usable on a text console without a
  mouse as well as in X.  There are at least 3 hackers here who prefer
  such a setup.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).