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: Installing cond* in core Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:57:11 -0500 Message-ID: References: <868r4a6lbb.fsf@gnu.org> <868r495yo6.fsf@gnu.org> <865xzd5uv9.fsf@gnu.org> 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="33389"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: acm@muc.de, stefankangas@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue Jan 30 04:58:05 2024 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 1rUfG9-0008Tf-0J for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 30 Jan 2024 04:58:05 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rUfFW-00058m-Gy; Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:57:26 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rUfFK-0004n6-8M for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:57:17 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rUfFJ-0000rL-So; Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:57:13 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=Date:References:Subject:In-Reply-To:To:From: mime-version; bh=orbUaiUKZ9E68r0UAtLG+DaxU7aMZVcV8BcyR2oDSgg=; b=lKLI/2IxoQio X+qLEIsmntg//NOJLDX2PBYfHOfYVhhs7ExqaHYDBsgMSVVJMgisZolu+nwdQHSR0witm0lKp7r/V gi/QWPOSM/TiOkjJSp+hsTax1iFTDnettbfWCvh8YH7+kUDdb1FehdsHe4kiqh7HmH0mMnRetREiR iye+lyeMMBu42mPn7Hj1MbQNK0HX0MFRrHiQM4tRw1jntRUfexdtgXN4pBVoWz7FNt7AL9ZQ+pmy1 +1mlr5lAIYvXMS5ZV3xtujZObdBNY55exlL4XhsqBawW6kW/TeJbw3puafmmm3pFjpxqs6gc+/XDh MXuFRBxXMomqH73SrCnwfQ==; Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rUfFH-0006MV-Nd; Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:57:11 -0500 In-Reply-To: <865xzd5uv9.fsf@gnu.org> (message from Eli Zaretskii on Sun, 28 Jan 2024 17:40:42 +0200) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 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-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:315624 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. ]]] > > > > I don't think I have ever intalled anything controversial without > > > > discussing it on the list. It seems that nobody regarded pcase as posing an important design issue when it was installed. It is a kind of design issue we usually don't think about. We used to use an overflowing sink as the icon for Emacs. If some people think a feature is useful, we might try to improve some details, and then we put it in. We're not used to asking, "How do we avoid having duplicate features? How do we achieve these goals while also keeping Emacs as simple as possible?" Instead we get a congeries of every feature that seemed useful for something. This issue arises for some sorts of features and not for others. It tends to be biggest for features that are rather unspecialized. for specialized things, it may not be an issue at all. For instance, a package to communicate using the (fictional) Frotz protocol does not raise an issue like this. Some users will use the Frotz protocol and others won't, but the existence of support for it won't inconvenience developers much. Unless you work on one of the few things that actually interact with Frotz, you won't ever need to know about that code. By contrast, pcase does increase what Emacs developers need to learn, because it is unspecialized. We should all be on the lookout for proposals to install a construct which is unspecialized enough to get used in many areas of the Emacs code base. In such a situation, we should make sure we fill that niche in the cleanest possible way. -- Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org) Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)