From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add prettify symbols to python-mode Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2015 19:15:44 +0300 Message-ID: <83oagtjemn.fsf@gnu.org> References: <1442777283-27514-1-git-send-email-mvoteiza@udel.edu> <20150921005306.GA29147@holos> <87h9mlwt6l.fsf@Rainer.invalid> <83bnctliay.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1443024983 1201 80.91.229.3 (23 Sep 2015 16:16:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2015 16:16:23 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Stromeko@nexgo.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Xue Fuqiao Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Sep 23 18:16:12 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@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 1Zemi8-0008SM-8f for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 23 Sep 2015 18:16:00 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:49029 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zemi2-0003Mp-Ps for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:15:54 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:48317) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zemhy-0003Me-UG for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:15:52 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zemhv-000652-8M for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:15:50 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:41396) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zemhu-00064k-Sq for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:15:47 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NV500M000VCXR00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 23 Sep 2015 19:15:45 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([84.94.185.246]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NV500MHX168ST50@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Wed, 23 Sep 2015 19:15:45 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 X-Received-From: 80.179.55.172 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:190297 Archived-At: > Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2015 22:12:30 +0800 > From: Xue Fuqiao > Cc: Achim Gratz , Emacs-devel > > On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 3:13 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > > One of the gravest problems I see for the future of Emacs development > > is that we slowly but steadily lose old-timers who know a lot about > > the Emacs internals and have lots of experience hacking them, whereas > > the (welcome) newcomers mostly prefer working on application-level > > code in Lisp. If this tendency continues, we will soon lose the > > ability to make deep infrastructure changes, i.e. will be unable to > > add new features that need non-trivial changes on the C level. > > Yes, this is also what I see. As a "newcomer" (in comparison with most > Emacs hackers on this list, who have been contributing to Emacs for much > longer than me, and have a deeper understanding of the system as a > whole), some possible causes for this problem are: > > * Hacking on the C level is inherently more difficult than the Lisp > (application) level. I don't see why. C is not a complicated language, and a large part of the Emacs source code never touches its relatively more problematic parts, like memory allocation. > * Perhaps our effort on (info "(elisp) GNU Emacs Internals") is not > enough. (Although it's almost impossible to document the ins and outs > of the Emacs Lisp interpreter, the redisplay code, and other C > infrastructure in Emacs, let alone having them updated.) This is a red herring: the C-level internals are extensively documented in comments to the respective source files. Many source files have large commentaries at their beginning describing their design and implementation. Having those in Texinfo will not change anything. If someone comes up with a list of specific design aspects that are in their opinion under-documented, post them. I'd be surprised to see there anything that someone active here can tell which isn't already in the comments, but who knows. > * There is a deeper going split between the core developers and the rest > of the community (this one is not specific to C/Lisp, and has many > technical and non-technical reasons). So not really relevant to the issue at hand. > * Many times, discussions on emacs-devel are defensive rather than > constructive (not specific to C either). Likewise. > * Emacs runs on all versions of Windows from Windows 98 and Windows NT > 4.0 through to Windows 10, and even MS-DOS (although msdos.c is pretty > easy to read). I'm not sure whether the maintenance burden is worthy. No one needs to hack on code specific to these platforms if they don't feel like it. Our problem is falling behind on Posix platforms, not on the rest of them. Most of the Emacs internals are platform-independent anyway. Just pretend that this issue doesn't exist. > Currently, I don't have any concrete proposal to figuring out a > practical solution, but I'll do my bit and try to improve Emacs's > condition. There's no other practical solution except volunteering and getting your hands dirty. Knowledge and experience will come with time.