Re: Emacs on GNUstep (prerelease)

[Adrian Robert <arobert@cogsci.ucsd.edu>]

On Oct 14, 2004, at 10:27 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     This is a modification of "Emacs on Aqua"
>     (http://emacs-on-aqua.sf.net), which traces its lineage back to an
>     original port of GNU Emacs to NeXTstep by Carl Edman, which was
>     successively modified for OpenStep, Rhapsody, and OS X, and updated
>     most recently to emacs version 20.7.  Hence the 8.0 version number.
>
> Can you find all the authors of those changes, so we could get
> legal papers from them in order to install this?

I'm willing to try.  (And I've already signed over copyright for my own 
FSF contributions.)  Actually I believe that some of the authors should 
have papers on file already.  Who would I contact at FSF/records to 
verify this?

Note I assume you are talking about the case if we go the route of 
updating the ns-emacs codebase to 21.  If we go the route of starting 
from the Carbon-based version, it is OK copyright-wise to use the 
ns-emacs code as a reference as long as major chunks are not copied 
directly over, correct?


>     If this happens, we will eventually be interested in trying to 
> bring
>     this port up to Emacs 21.  I have heard that there were a lot of
>     internal changes to the Emacs graphical terminal code from 20 to 
> 21,
>     and therefore it may end up being easier to start from the current
>     Carbon-based Emacs for OS X to do this.
>
> Since we support a greater variety of display platforms and toolkits
> now, the newer code might also be easier to do this in.

Is there a summary available anywhere of what the main internal changes 
to display management were?  I know that, functionally, images, 
proportional fonts, and the fringe are the main additions.  But maybe 
there was significant internal revamping?  (I know I can just go and 
peruse the code but it might save some time to have a little 
guidance..)