From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Uday S Reddy Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: line-move-visual Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:12:19 +0100 Organization: Janet Usenet Reading Service. Message-ID: <848w6ndwn0.fsf@cs.bham.ac.uk> References: <87pr07qjio.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> <878w6vq7ew.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> <871vcmhq79.fsf@wivenhoe.ul.ie> <580d5f23-e251-483f-9752-7e77b1ca2fb7@40g2000pry.googlegroups.com> <2a7dc148-e2cc-4681-9d8c-ccd1140aa6d7@j36g2000prj.googlegroups.com> <089883ee-0a63-4cb4-a0ec-d2fe4e71cc03@y18g2000prn.googlegroups.com> <87wruco5yq.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <87wrubfd8p.fsf@rapttech.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1291830554 5377 80.91.229.12 (8 Dec 2010 17:49:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 17:49:14 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Dec 08 18:49:09 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PQO8b-0005T5-Ap for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:49:09 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:36895 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PQO8a-0005RM-HZ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:49:08 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!newsfeed.esat.net!feeder.news.heanet.ie!feed4.jnfs.ja.net!jnfs.ja.net!times.reader.netnews.ja.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs,comp.lang.lisp Original-Lines: 97 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: gromit.cs.bham.ac.uk Original-X-Trace: north.jnrs.ja.net 1276164749 14263 147.188.193.16 (10 Jun 2010 10:12:29 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@north.jnrs.ja.net Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:12:29 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:8n+iiQNKDevscBvd4bILBPdmcxE= Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:178796 comp.emacs:99972 comp.lang.lisp:288893 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:75730 Archived-At: >> Uday S Reddy writes: >> >>> Coupled with these real technical issues, there are the attitudinal >>> problems of holier-than-thou, smarter-than-thou and modern-than-thou >>> and what have you. > > Despite the fact I don't agree witht he change in default behavior, I > also want to make it very clear, I DO NOT support what has been > posted regarding the motivation, care and competancy of the emacs > developers and maintainers. To those of you who have done this I would > say that making all sorts of assumptions regarding the motivations and > considerations of the devel team without actually looking at what > discussions did take place is an unjustified and unwarranted attack on > those few people who put in the hard word to develop and maintain this > free software. It is a cheap dishonarable swipe. It lumps all the > developers together as if they are all in agreement regarding every > change made and ignores the effort put in to try and get the right > outcome and do the difficult job of balancing many different views. Oh, dear! Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn't mean to imply that the Emacs developers have shown the "attitudinal problems" that I mentioned. It had more to do with the attitudes expressed by some of the "spokesmen" here (in Joseph Brenner's good words). In themselves, the devs have been nothing less than professional and polite, either here or on the emacs-devel list. They do an incredible amount of work, quite silently, and we all owe a great debt of gratitude to them! The thinking behind the line-move-visual decision went something like this. If C-n moves by logical lines then the new users would be confused. If it moves by visual lines then the experienced users would be bothered. But we have a flag whereby experienced users can revert to the old behavior. The new users won't know enough to set a flag. So, let us go with the default that helps out the new users. See this thread for example: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/101551/focus=101560 or tens of other threads that discussed line-move-visual. I don't think there is any reason to attribute arrogance or carelessness on the part of the developers in reaching that decision. At worst, it was a technical mistake in thinking that both the defaults are equally bad. Or, perhaps an error of judgement that the experienced users will know enough to change the default. --- Now that this thread has gone for this long and still seems to have some life left, why don't we come up with some constructive ideas? I have a few of them here, mostly colored by my experience with maintaining VM. The first suggestion I have is that the Emacs developers can find a way to consult the user community about potential changes. It is not reasonable to expect that all users should take part in the developers discussion in order to provide their input. It seems like an additional imposition on top of all the work that the developers already do, but having an open discussion about visible behavior changes ahead of time can save from unnecessary heartburn later on. I do this kind of thing regularly for VM. See this discussion for example: http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.vm.info/browse_thread/thread/1297bd3ab1de78d9/2361a430ee7e7bc3?lnk=raot#2361a430ee7e7bc3 The second suggestion, which Stefan seems to be thinking about already, is to clearly label changes in the NEWS file. This is also something I have been doing in VM. See, for example, the NEWS file here: https://launchpad.net/vm/+download I am constantly irritated by the fact that some of the downstream distributions omit the the NEWS files from installations. I have resorted to putting the NEWS file as an independent download on the web site so that the downstream users can get it directly. I think we should try and impress upon the downstream guys the importance of NEWS files. A third suggestion is that we should start thinking of Emacs as mission-critical software. "Text editor" is a lousy description which has long been out of date. It is really platform on which a number of critical services are delivered, for development of projects or for running of teams and organizations. A lot rides on it and any changes that potentially cause corruption of files or data can be quite serious. Finally, and I might be a bit OTT here, I think we should think of free software as community-owned software. It is not developer-owned software (despite the aberration caused by the existence of FSF as a copyright-owner). Lots of people contribute, and they come and go. The software will live on for long after they are gone. Free software isn't "free-to-fork" software, even though the right to fork exists as a last resort and as a foundation for everything else. If that right needs to be exercised, it is a signal that the community-ownership of the software has broken down and that is not good for any of us. Cheers, Uday