Re: Efforts to attract more users?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:43:38 +0900
> Cc: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>,
> 	"emacs-devel@gnu.org" <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> I don't know what it feels like to mentor Lennart, personally.  I do
> know what it feels like to try to get code into Emacs, *and I won't
> try it again*.

So you are talking about Lennart, but think about yourself.  It would
have been fair to tell that up front.  More importantly, there's a
world of difference between these two cases, even though the result
might be similar.

> But I bet there is also a fair amount of good code sitting around
> out there that people are unwilling to contribute because of the
> scutwork and bikeshedding entailed in getting anything into Emacs,
> and which experienced developers could whip into shape quite quickly
> if they just took the code and said "it will be our pleasure".

I don't think there's ``a fair amount of code'' in this status.
However, I hope you will understand that making the necessary changes
for a contributor who is unwilling to make them by herself is not a
good policy in the long run, because (1) it's hardly a good use of the
limited time resources I have, and (2) we will need to do this
forever, as the contributor doesn't want to adapt their practices to
some minimal requirements of QA and code cleanness.  He even refuses
to reformat his code as to facilitate the review!

> I can understand Richard or Miles or other non-Windows-user
> brushing it off; I don't understand you or Eli being willing to let
> this one go without at least trying to beat it into shape yourself,

What's not to understand?  I have no time for arguing with Lennart,
and I have better use (developing bidi) for the few hours a week I
have to work on Emacs.  I'm willing to invest some portion of that
time in teaching someone who genuinely wants to learn.  I'm
_un_willing to _waste_ it on endless arguments with someone who thinks
they know better.