Re: How big are your customisations?

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> In article <87odv3v779.fsf@tiger.rapttech.com.au>,
> Tim X  <timx@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>>
>>Mine is about 750 lines. However, I am not counting little packages
>>and utilities I have written to enhance my emacs environment. If I
>>include these, then I have another 62,000 (I have a couple of large
>>specialised packages I use). I also have a lot of other packages I
>>have installed and use form time to time - these would add up to at
>>least a few hundred thousand lines - it all depends on what you
>>classify as customization. Personally, I wouldn't count add on
>>packages or packages I've written - just stuff done in my .emacs file
>>(or would normally put in the .emacs file as I've broken some of it
>>off into individual files to make them easier to maintain etc).
>>
>>Tim
>>-- 
>
>
> Of course you've contributed them, somewhere, to all of us --
> (after doing some doc, too)?

No, most of it I have not contributed and have no plans to. As I said,
they are specialised to my needs and I have no desire or time to
document or support or deal with e-mails from lazy individuals who
cannot be bothered trying to work out why things don't work. This may
seem like a hard attitude, but it is based on past experiences when I
did release stuff for others to use and ended up getting abused by
people who couldn't get it working. I've never understood the number
of users who expect to be able to get code for free and despite
disclaimers and the rest, feel they have the right to abuse you when
they either don't like what you have done or cannot get it to work. 

The less specialised stuff I have contributed, but its a very small
number in comparison to the total elisp I have written. It is also
extremely trivial and requires minimal documentation. My main
contributions have been bug fixes for other peoples packages, like
sql-mode, tramp, emacspeak, plsql-mode (which, last time I looked was
still broken - I gave up submitting fixes when I got no response, plus
I don't have to do Oracle stuff at present), w3 and a few others. I
think this is more valuable than releasing more half baked globs of
code that really only address my own personal requirements.

There is a big big difference between code written for personal use
and code written for others to use. Code for others takes a lot more
work and a lot more time - very difficult to justify when it is likely
nobody else will use it. 

tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au