* Request: new emacs release
@ 2004-03-30 19:47 Adrian Robert
2004-03-30 23:52 ` Stefan Monnier
0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Adrian Robert @ 2004-03-30 19:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
Hi all,
I am sorry to bother the developer list if this is not felt
appropriate, but I just wanted a user's perspective (not sure how
typical) to be heard..
I am a long-time emacs user frustrated with the current state and
worried from the tone of developer discussions here that no release
will be coming for a long time. I'm listing my personal list of
reasons for wanting a new release, FWIW, and not with any intention of
bashing, just in the spirit of giving feedback from a user
perspective..
1) Mac OS X
Due to various maintainership incidents, the only option for Panther
users to obtain a working, non-ancient aqua emacs is to compile the CVS
"21.3.50" from source. However due to no release plans being made,
this is a hit-or-miss affair -- bugs I've observed in recent attempts
include font-lock "regexp" colorizing not being performed, startup
failure due to lisp load errors, difficulties getting third-party
packages to run smoothly, and frequent (1+ per day) crashes. Even the
binary packages available on the net, which tend to be from better CVS
snapshots, still exhibit crashing and other bugs.
XEmacs is not really an option because it only works on OS X under X11
(and therefore uses ugly font rendering, etc.).
I know there is opposition to making OS X much of a priority in the
FSF, and I personally wish Apple would lend a hand in some way, but I
thought it was at least decided to provide a version. Right now this
only exists in CVS.
2) Fringe customization
For 4 years now, users wishing to use emacs 21 have had to live with
the unsuppressable super-wide double-fringe that came with that
version. Many times this makes the difference between showing two
windows size-by-side in a reasonably-sized font and not, and it takes
real estate from other windows in all cases. Many others have
complained about this.
"21.3.50" makes it configurable. (This was promised for 21.3 and
didn't make it in.) Furthermore it updates the buffer window behavior
to NOT take up an extra line after every 80 column line, using the
fringe to mark this instead. This is a bigger deal for people who edit
code than it may seem. I've tried compiling a CVS emacs to get the
21.3.50 behavior, but see above on my luck with hitting CVS on a good
day..
3) Time passage
It has been 1 year since 21.3. Aside from the major improvements (Mac
OS X support and fringe customizability) mentioned above, there must
have been many other worthwhile things done in this time -- it would be
nice to have them in a release. Also, the cleaning out of bugs that
comes with making a release might improve general development
efficiency (know there are differing opinions on this)..
best regards,
Adrian Robert
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: Request: new emacs release
2004-03-30 19:47 Adrian Robert
@ 2004-03-30 23:52 ` Stefan Monnier
2004-03-31 7:49 ` Juanma Barranquero
2004-03-31 9:03 ` Piet van Oostrum
0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Stefan Monnier @ 2004-03-30 23:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
Cc: emacs-devel
I'll just say that in case someone still wonders, I'm 100% in agreement
with Adrian that we should get a new releaqse from the CVS trunk ASAP.
This means code freeze Real-Soon-Now.
> a hit-or-miss affair -- bugs I've observed in recent attempts include
> font-lock "regexp" colorizing not being performed, startup failure due to
> lisp load errors, difficulties getting third-party packages to run smoothly,
> and frequent (1+ per day) crashes.
I use Emacs on Mac OS X almost everyday (though in X11 mode) and don't see
any such things. Also I haven't seen any bug reports about it.
Without bug reports, there's not much we can do. Please help us
by becoming a good friend of M-x report-emacs-bug.
> For 4 years now, users wishing to use emacs 21 have had to live with the
> unsuppressable super-wide double-fringe that came with that version.
Maybe you get unlicky because of your font-size, but AFAIK, this
"super-wide" is "one char wide", so the difference with Emacs-20.7 is only
one extra column (there used to be one (right) fringe, now there are two).
> Many times this makes the difference between showing two windows
> size-by-side in a reasonably-sized font and not, and it takes real estate
Going down from 80 to 79 columns should get you back the Emacs-20
frame size. Admittedly, you'll lose a column.
> from other windows in all cases. Many others have complained about this.
Oh, yes. We've heard more than our share.
> "21.3.50" makes it configurable. (This was promised for 21.3 and didn't
> make it in.)
It was probably promised by someone who thought that 21.3 was going to be
taken from the CVS trunk.
> 3) Time passage
> It has been 1 year since 21.3.
You don't seem to realize that 21.3 is a very minor change from 21.1 and
that during 21.1 and 21.3 there's been many more changes than that.
It's just that they were kept on the CVS trunk and not included in the
release. So feel free to bump your "1 year of work" to "4 years of work".
Stefan
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: Request: new emacs release
2004-03-30 23:52 ` Stefan Monnier
@ 2004-03-31 7:49 ` Juanma Barranquero
2004-03-31 9:03 ` Piet van Oostrum
1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Juanma Barranquero @ 2004-03-31 7:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
On 30 Mar 2004 18:52:49 -0500
Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> I'll just say that in case someone still wonders, I'm 100% in agreement
> with Adrian that we should get a new releaqse from the CVS trunk ASAP.
> This means code freeze Real-Soon-Now.
The issue has been brought up a few times in past years, and (almost?)
everyone seems to agree that we should do something. Still, no decision
has been ever reached on the account of when/what to release, and whether
a new numbering scheme should be used.
So perhaps we should try to be positive:
1) Is a "features" (i.e., from trunk) release necessary?
2) Would it be useful?
3) Is there any impeding reason?
4) What would be the inconveniences?
5) Should we change the numbering scheme?
In my (narrow) view, the answers are:
1) Not "necessary", because 21.3 is pretty much rock-solid and there
are (to my knowledge) no showstopper bugs waiting for an urgent
patch.
2) Would be useful, in two accounts: on one hand, the 3+ years of new
developments would be exposed to the public (yeah, I know a few
download from CVS, but that's not the same as a General Availability
release) and so more used and more heavily tested; on the other hand,
because it would help to dispell a certain perceived "staleness" of
the Emacs project. To some, that seems like not a good reason to act,
but, as recently witnessed with the Subversion 1.0.0 release,
"getting out" a new version stirs interest and brings up new users
and new developers.
3) Not sure. I know there are a few branches heavily developed, most
notably the Unicode one, but I'm not sure whether it was ever
decided that the next features release would (or wouldn't) include
the Unicode work. In other words, I don't know if there are plans to
do a 21.4 "new features" from trunk and a 22.1 "full Unicode", or
just one of them. Personally, I'd branch for 21.4 Real Soon Now and
bring Unicode to the trunk so it could be on track for a release Not
That Soon, But Soon Enough.
4) The main inconvenience, IMO, is diverted resources. Still, I
(perhaps naïvely) don't see it as a great problem. Measures can be
taken, as semi-freezing the trunk while 21.4 is in pretest so we can
focus on the release. I'd even bet the idea of getting ready to
release so much improvements would have a positive impact on us... :)
5) I think most developers agree that a new numbering scheme would be
useful, though there's less agreement on exactly *which* one. I'm
not going to repeat here the long threads, available in the mailing
list archives :)
Juanma
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: Request: new emacs release
2004-03-30 23:52 ` Stefan Monnier
2004-03-31 7:49 ` Juanma Barranquero
@ 2004-03-31 9:03 ` Piet van Oostrum
1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Piet van Oostrum @ 2004-03-31 9:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
>>>>> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> (SM) wrote:
SM> I'll just say that in case someone still wonders, I'm 100% in agreement
SM> with Adrian that we should get a new releaqse from the CVS trunk ASAP.
SM> This means code freeze Real-Soon-Now.
>> a hit-or-miss affair -- bugs I've observed in recent attempts include
>> font-lock "regexp" colorizing not being performed, startup failure due to
>> lisp load errors, difficulties getting third-party packages to run smoothly,
>> and frequent (1+ per day) crashes.
SM> I use Emacs on Mac OS X almost everyday (though in X11 mode) and don't see
SM> any such things. Also I haven't seen any bug reports about it.
SM> Without bug reports, there's not much we can do. Please help us
SM> by becoming a good friend of M-x report-emacs-bug.
I did send in a bug report some 2 weeks ago. I have the impression from
the stack trace that the bug is in the Mac-specific windowing code.
--
Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum@hccnet.nl
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: Request: new emacs release
[not found] <20040331080125.BA47465A7E@imf.math.ku.dk>
@ 2004-03-31 10:43 ` Lars Hansen
2004-03-31 10:50 ` Juanma Barranquero
0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Lars Hansen @ 2004-03-31 10:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
>
>
> 1) Not "necessary", because 21.3 is pretty much rock-solid and there
> are (to my knowledge) no showstopper bugs waiting for an urgent
> patch.
>
>
The rock-solid-ness depends somewhat on how you use Emacs. Emacs (21.2)
crash for me, if not every day, then at least every week. Although I
don't know how to confirm it, I think the reason is the missing GCPRO
in directory-files and directory-files-and-attributes, a bug that has
been corrected now.
It may not be a showstopper, but it would be nice with a released Emacs
without this bug.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: Request: new emacs release
2004-03-31 10:43 ` Request: new emacs release Lars Hansen
@ 2004-03-31 10:50 ` Juanma Barranquero
2004-03-31 11:07 ` Lars Hansen
0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Juanma Barranquero @ 2004-03-31 10:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 12:43:26 +0200
Lars Hansen <larsh@math.ku.dk> wrote:
> The rock-solid-ness depends somewhat on how you use Emacs.
Sure. Note I said "to my knowledge".
> Emacs (21.2)
> crash for me, if not every day, then at least every week.
Does 21.3 (which was released more than a year ago) crashes too? Or did
you mean to say 21.3?
> It may not be a showstopper, but it would be nice with a released Emacs
> without this bug.
I agree.
Juanma
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: Request: new emacs release
2004-03-31 10:50 ` Juanma Barranquero
@ 2004-03-31 11:07 ` Lars Hansen
0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Lars Hansen @ 2004-03-31 11:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
Cc: emacs-devel
Juanma Barranquero wrote:
>Does 21.3 (which was released more than a year ago) crashes too? Or did
>you mean to say 21.3?
>
>
>
I meant 21.2. The systems I use have not been upgraded to 21.3, so I
don't know for shure that 21.3 would chrash too. But the bug I suspect
is in 21.3 too.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2004-03-31 11:07 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
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[not found] <20040331080125.BA47465A7E@imf.math.ku.dk>
2004-03-31 10:43 ` Request: new emacs release Lars Hansen
2004-03-31 10:50 ` Juanma Barranquero
2004-03-31 11:07 ` Lars Hansen
2004-03-30 19:47 Adrian Robert
2004-03-30 23:52 ` Stefan Monnier
2004-03-31 7:49 ` Juanma Barranquero
2004-03-31 9:03 ` Piet van Oostrum
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