From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: florian@fsavigny.de (Florian v. Savigny) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Bringing psgml back to life Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:46:15 -0400 Message-ID: References: <503C947B.5040306@easy-emacs.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1346175982 11924 80.91.229.3 (28 Aug 2012 17:46:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:46:22 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Aug 28 19:46:23 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@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 1T6Prq-0001RK-QH for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:46:22 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42754 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1T6Pro-0001E2-PW for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:46:20 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:44520) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1T6Prj-0001Dq-Fg for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:46:16 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1T6Pri-00076p-BA for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:46:15 -0400 Original-Received: from srv4.ns-domain-hosting.de ([178.63.89.203]:51744) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1T6Pri-00076Z-1S for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:46:14 -0400 X-No-Relay: not in my network Original-Received: from bertrandrussell.Speedport_W_723V_1_26_000 (p4FECDD84.dip.t-dialin.net [79.236.221.132]) by srv4.ns-domain-hosting.de (Postfix) with ESMTPA id 3179F186441 for ; Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:46:13 +0200 (CEST) In-reply-to: <503C947B.5040306@easy-emacs.de> (message from Andreas Röhler on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:50:51 +0200) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 178.63.89.203 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:86569 Archived-At: Various contributors wrote:=20 > > Any damn programmer can write code a compiler can > > understand. It takes a good programmer to write code that any > > damn programmer can understand. > you may safely assume the lat[t]er. > IMO psgml-package counts as one of the most useful and most skilled s= o far. Although I'm perhaps not really in a position to jugde, I agree that psgml is an outstanding piece of code. It can (independently of nsgmls) parse DTDs and SGML files, and correctly so, i.e. it understands the logical structure of the document you are editing. That alone, as far as I understand, is no small achievement. (As far as I know, one of the reasons why XML was invented was that it is such a headache to write an SGML parser.) I certainly think that any damn programmer couldn't have written that. It is against this backdrop that I assume that Lennart simply didn't have the time to comment the code in a way that would have made it easy to maintain even for tinkerers like me. Even so, he did write an info file about the API, i.e. the kind of low-level functions that I used to write my add-ons. (Sad I somehow didn't know that when I wrote them, but found out about them by rummaging through the sources.) > I don't know what is the copyright status w.r.t other > contributors, but it would be worth checking it, to see if we can > put psgml in GNU ELPA. I've just gone through the change log. Although it looks like Lennart wrote about 99.9% of the code, he also lists five other people as having contributed to it: Dave Love , Yasushi Abe Marc-Antoine Parent David Megginson Matthias Clasen , [the email addresses have probably been defunct for years, but who knows] and the following two as having made suggestions which prompted him to change something: Dirk Fr=F6mbgen Mark Eichin Is there any standard way to check the copyright status with respect to people which might be difficult to contact? (I have no idea whether the latter two are relevant in any way.) Best regards, Florian