From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Discoverability (was: Changes for 28) Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:07:43 -0400 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="30279"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: stefankangas@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Tom Gillespie Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri Sep 11 06:08:14 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kGaM9-0007nO-NO for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 06:08:13 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:51596 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kGaM8-0004kd-JP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:08:12 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:37526) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kGaLg-0004JQ-Ur for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:07:44 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:46089) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kGaLg-0000Hx-Ls; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:07:44 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1kGaLf-0002g5-PO; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:07:43 -0400 In-Reply-To: (message from Tom Gillespie on Tue, 8 Sep 2020 21:36:37 -0700) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:255072 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > As a sufferer under some of those changes, I am well aware of the > pain that such divergences cause the users. I acknowledge that > sometimes those changes need to be made for sake of consistency > with larger refactorings. However, the fact that they do happen should > be viewed as a failure of engineering and not an excuse for future failures. Emacs is older than the operating systems people use today. (It is almost as old as the first Unix, which barely resembled the Unix of later decades.) It is much older than Linux, the kernel. The oldest design elements were not designed for the uses we make of them today. And since we wrote those, people have developed other areas of software which don't fit Emacs very well. So there are good reasons to redesign some of them. However, people actually use Emacs, so a greatly incompatible change in Emacs is as unhinkable as a greatly incompatible change in the New York City subway. We have to build new lines through the maze of underground pipes and cables. -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)