Re: Another 'best' practices question ??

[Sebastian Tennant <sebyte@smolny.plus.com>]

Quoth Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>:
> Sebastian> Regarding ELPA, a couple of suggestions if I may be so bold:
> Sebastian>  1.  How about 'installed' rather than <blank> in the
> status column.
> [...]
> I chose blank because it looks sort of busy with "installed".  But I
> don't really know what is best -- "installed" is clearer.

The answer is simple. How about some font-lock-keyword highlighting?
'Installed' could be in a different colour (in about 3 lines of code)
could it not?

> Sebastian>  2.  A hint as to how to run the newly installed package (not in the
> Sebastian>      description because there isn't room, but somewhere).  For
> Sebastian>      instance, having installed sudoku in a snip, I then had to
> Sebastian>      navigate to the source file and read the commentary to find out
> Sebastian>      that I had to eval (require 'sudoku') before I was good to go.
>
> Yeah, this is a problem.  I don't really know what to do about it.
>
> For most packages, package.el will extract ";;;###autoload" comments
> and make those available at package-activation time.

I did notice a buffer called sudoku-autoloads.el (or something like
that) lying around after I'd installed the package and played the
game, but I didn't examine it closely.  I'm pretty sure it didn't
include any clear instructions.

> But I see I didn't add these to sudoku.el :(.

Don't worry man... it works.  That's all that matters.  Others will
take care of things when it catches on.  I, for one, think it's a
great tool.

> If you try the bubbles game you can see it in action a bit more
> clearly: it will download, install, and activate the game, and then
> you can just do M-x bubbles.

I'm afraid I can't spend my time just playing games, as much as I'd
like to ;-)

> Sebastian>  3.  'g' in the Package buffer is described as 'revert'.
> Sebastian>  Is this not better described as 'refresh'?
>
> In 0.4 I'm using "refresh" for the 'r' option.  "g" is "revert" by
> analogy with dired or buffer-menu -- it undoes local changes but does
> not download a new copy of the archive contents.

Ah what the hell... :-)

Sebastian

P.S. I think it's time you started a thread called 'ELPA - Every Load
     Path Answer', or something like that.  Actually, something like
     that, but you get my point I hope.