From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rustom Mody Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Speeding up Emacs load time Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:13:03 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <26142f86-cacf-40a9-a101-fc8a37818347@googlegroups.com> References: <87r4ezdiiy.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <87r4ez92ry.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> <87txjv7gen.fsf@VLAN-3434.student.uu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1373948113 12897 80.91.229.3 (16 Jul 2013 04:15:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 04:15:13 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jul 16 06:15:18 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UywfV-0008BD-PJ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 16 Jul 2013 06:15:17 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:54372 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UywfV-0008Hq-Bn for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 16 Jul 2013 00:15:17 -0400 X-Received: by 10.224.36.15 with SMTP id r15mr949867qad.8.1373947983835; Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:13:03 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.50.126.33 with SMTP id mv1mr1040516igb.1.1373947983687; Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:13:03 -0700 (PDT) Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!t19no1660842qam.0!news-out.google.com!dk8ni102qab.0!nntp.google.com!t19no1770101qam.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=59.95.29.60; posting-account=mBpa7woAAAAGLEWUUKpmbxm-Quu5D8ui Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 59.95.29.60 User-Agent: G2/1.0 Injection-Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 04:13:03 +0000 Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:199882 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:92148 Archived-At: On Tuesday, July 16, 2013 8:08:17 AM UTC+5:30, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > From: Emanuel Berg=20 > > Eli Zaretskii writes: > > > Expecting that to somehow miraculously materialize out of thin > > > air is not very wise. > > Are you sure that isn't, on the contrary, natural? > Yes, I am. This argument reminds me of Swing vs AWT (from java-land). Which is heavyweight and lightweight; which native and non-native etc is a = question of outlook. And if you think Swing has won, note that SWT tries t= o partially go back from swing to awt. The real problem is that sometimes same is different; different is same. Illustration: Line-endings is a simple case where emacs generally gets this right. Start= emacs on windows and make a C-file say. Do the same thing on linux and ge= t the 'same' file. However if we swap the files Windows will show a 'unix'= and linux will show a 'dos' in the mode-line. What does this illustrate? That the right defaults on different systems ar= e different and emacs needs some significant amount of extra logic to get i= t right. I believe the question comes down to this: What does portability mean? I studied C in the 80s (K&R 1st ed!) and remember it described C as portabl= e! Today -- 2013 -- this sounds like a ridiculous and I would say abusive trav= esty. Sure one can avoid 'non-portable' features but then the limiting case of th= is direction is that C programs would tend to the null do-nothing program: main() {;} Then somewhere in the 90s there came along something called perl. I remembe= r being incredulous: "The SAME language runs on dos and unix?? Cant be..." And that set a new bar for portability. Willy-nilly all that has followed has had to measure up -- python, ruby, ha= skell etc... including emacs. We may call the two portabilities passive and active. Passive portability (80s C): Avoid troublesome non-portable features Active portability (post perl): DO what it takes for the system to run on a= ll OSes. I hear Eli as saying: Passive portability is provided. Asking for more is o= utside the domain of emacs' responsibility And Emanuel: If its not really portable (ie actively) then its useless to m= e =20 My own experience: I used emacs on windows for some years. It was painful. = That may well be because I am more comfortable on linux than windows. 1. Every windows program would print OTB -- except emacs 2. Backslash forwardslash in path problems. Yeah at a find-file prompt ema= cs would be actively portable and understand either. However if I was care= less and cut-pasted a path from windows-explorer the registry or some such = into elisp... MUCH WOE. If lucky, elisp would give a syntax error. Mostly= the paths would just not work. 3. The .emacs would simply not be found because $HOME does not have a centr= al existence on windows as it does on unix. There must have been a dozen such sources of grief. In many of them, I wou= ld have to (unwillingly!) agree with Eli that its not emacs' problem: If ipython or tkinter has a bug that surfaces on windows but not linux how = is that emacs' problem? If I dont know how to use cygwin why blame emacs? However the entire experience puts me in Emanuel camp -- making emacs work = on windows is much more work than on linux. -------- OT ---------- My newest laptop comes with Windows-8. Makes it unusable not just for emac= s but for almost everything. I cant even find the control-panel!! I guess the idea is to make it look like a cell-phone. In all fairness, gnome is copycating windows in converting my computer into= a dysfunctional phone. However in linux I can throw out gnome and switch = to xfce. Dont see any such choice on windows.