Re: installing emacs and X11 on OS X

[Hugo Wolf <hwolf@deutsches.lieder.net>]

In article <mailman.1035870384.15595.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>, Eli
Zaretskii wrote: 

> I tried to explain at length why it is not nice and not clean.  

You explained that it's been misued in the past, and I believe
you. That's an excellent reason to get rid of the variable but not any
kind of reason to jettison the concept which window-system is
currently providing ("runtime window system" or "gui environment" or
whatever you call to call it). 


> As 
> another example, it doesn't fit into the future Emacs model where GUI and 
> text (a.k.a. tty) frames can be supported in the same session.  

This suggests that the abstract concept of "runtime window system" is
perfectly valid but that's it's frame-specific.  I have no problem
with that at all.  In fact I like it.  I'm not wedded to the variable
'window-system'.  I'm using it now because I have no choice now --
this is one and only hook emacs provides me.  What it's important to
me is the concept, not the access point.

For emacs as it exists today, I hope we agree that it's a bit silly to
recommend against using the only tool available if you believe that
the concept it's supporting is legitimate.


> Anyway, the need for the specific distinction that was raised in this 
> thread is something new, at least to me (I don't think I ever heard it 
> before)

That's why vigorous discussions are healthy (and why the "how dare you
criticize the developers" attitude is so unhealthy).



> and seems at present to be specific to the Mac.  

Afaik osx is the only platform for which there are native builds of
emacs for two completely different window systems. If this is so, I'm
not surprised the issues we're discussing here never came up before.