Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Gilbert Harman <harman@Princeton.EDU> wrote ...

> I couldn't tell whether you are interested in using emacs with MCL, but if
> so, it is relevant that MCL already includes an emacs type editor, so you
> could just use that.

Yes, I know, FRED. However, I am using OpenMCL, which is an open
sourced MCL that doesn't have the integrated environment (plus some
other differences).

> It runs fine in OS X.

According to Digitool's web site, MCL currently only runs in Classic
and V5.0 is only for selected customers cause it's a preview, not an
official release yet.
I have MCL 4.2 and I do not intend to upgrade until V5.0 is
commercially available.

I am actually quite happy with an editor called Alpaca, which is open
source and written in OpenMCL. However, at first I asked the Lispers
for help with getting ILISP to work and they were very helpful. To
return the favour, I promised that I would write a mini-how-to for
setting up Carbon Emacs and ILISP for OSX users. The authors of ILISP
are going to include that in the ILISP user guide.

So, even if I am not going to use Emacs myself in the end, my aim is
to spare other Mac users the effort and get past Emacs as fast as
possible if all they are interested in is exploring a non-commercial
Lisp, such as OpenMCL, or even the trial version of Allegro (60 days,
can be renewed every 60 days by running a script but doesn't make any
executables which is fine for non-commercial use).

At the very least I will have to show

- how to quit
- how to copy and paste
- how to invoke the HyperSpec

and wrt anything that a Mac user might expect (such as drag and drop)
but which may not be there, I should tell readers what they can expect
and if it is only to avoid getting swamped in email by people who ask
"why can't I do ..." ;-)

> So does the current build of
> emacs, but you would need considerable expertise to install it correctly

Tell me about it ;-) It seems to be my fate to somehow manage to find
out and document it such that other clueless Mac users like myself
will be spared from running into the same roadblock.

I can tell you, I have managed to figure out things that would seem to
be a lot more difficult on the outset. For example, I set up a DNS
server for a home or small office LAN environment and wrote a 12 page
how-to guide that was very popular and I got tons of thank-you email
from Mac users many of whom said it was the first time they read
anything about DNS they could actually follow.

You would think that setting up DNS from scratch is a lot more
challenging than getting an editor to work, right?! Well, it's been
quite an experience. Something to tell one's grandchildren about, well
almost :-)


> and
> you do not seem to require the additional resources full emacs provides.

that's correct.

Anyway, thank you for your input and just in case if you have any idea
what could bring me a step further in my quest, please post again.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Rainer Joswig]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) wrote in message news:<39d9c156.0305071747.35c7365e@posting.google.com>...

> According to Digitool's web site, MCL currently only runs in Classic
> and V5.0 is only for selected customers cause it's a preview, not an
> official release yet.

Why don't you just do the basic research and go to the Digitool
web site and read it? It says on the front page:

"The beta version of MacOSX native MCL (MCL 5.0) is available for purchase."

Means, you (and everbody else) can buy the beta version and you
(and everybody else) would get the beta version. Yes, the beta
version runs under Mac OS X. Native. Yes, lots of people have it.

MCL5

[BK]

joswig@corporate-world.lisp.de (Rainer Joswig) wrote ...
> bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) wrote in message news:<39d9c156.0305071747.35c7365e@posting.google.com>...
> 
> > According to Digitool's web site, MCL currently only runs in Classic
> > and V5.0 is only for selected customers cause it's a preview, not an
> > official release yet.
> 
> Why don't you just do the basic research and go to the Digitool
> web site and read it? It says on the front page:
> 
> "The beta version of MacOSX native MCL (MCL 5.0) is available for purchase."
> 
> Means, you (and everbody else) can buy the beta version and you
> (and everybody else) would get the beta version. Yes, the beta
> version runs under Mac OS X. Native. Yes, lots of people have it.

OK, I mixed up the preview for selected customers bit, which was LispWorks:

http://www.lispworks.com/press_releases/press5.html


According to Digitool's website as of May 8, 2003, MCL 5 should be *available now*

http://www.digitool.com/purchase.html says:

MCL-5  MCL 5.0 (shipping January 2003)  $750.00
MCL-5B  MCL 5.0 beta (includes final release above)  $495.00

There is also a history of almost three years of "OSX version available soon".

Taking all this into account, why would I not wait until the thing *actually* ships?

thanks anyway
rgds
bk

Re: MCL5

[Rainer Joswig]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) wrote in message news:<39d9c156.0305080602.7c47d8b5@posting.google.com>...
> joswig@corporate-world.lisp.de (Rainer Joswig) wrote ...
> > bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) wrote in message news:<39d9c156.0305071747.35c7365e@posting.google.com>...
> > 
> > > According to Digitool's web site, MCL currently only runs in Classic
> > > and V5.0 is only for selected customers cause it's a preview, not an
> > > official release yet.
> > 
> > Why don't you just do the basic research and go to the Digitool
> > web site and read it? It says on the front page:
> > 
> > "The beta version of MacOSX native MCL (MCL 5.0) is available for purchase."
> > 
> > Means, you (and everbody else) can buy the beta version and you
> > (and everybody else) would get the beta version. Yes, the beta
> > version runs under Mac OS X. Native. Yes, lots of people have it.
> 
> OK, I mixed up the preview for selected customers bit, which was LispWorks:
> 
> http://www.lispworks.com/press_releases/press5.html
> 
> 
> According to Digitool's website as of May 8, 2003, MCL 5 should be *available now*
> 
> http://www.digitool.com/purchase.html says:
> 
> MCL-5  MCL 5.0 (shipping January 2003)  $750.00
> MCL-5B  MCL 5.0 beta (includes final release above)  $495.00
> 
> There is also a history of almost three years of "OSX version available soon".

The beta is available now. A final MCL is not yet available. A new
date has not been communicated.
 
> Taking all this into account, why would I not wait until the thing *actually* ships?

It is cheaper to get the beta now and later the shipping version. Right?

A lot of people who have Lisp-based code written for earlier versions
of MCL are already porting this code to the new Carbon-based MCL 5,
using the beta version of MCL 5.

Re: MCL5

[BK]

joswig@corporate-world.lisp.de (Rainer Joswig) wrote ...

> > ... why would I not wait until the thing *actually* ships?
> 
> It is cheaper to get the beta now and later the shipping version. Right?

Well, I don't mind paying a little more for the certainty that it
actually ships when it ships ;-) I can't recall ever having paid for
beta software that was actually called beta software. I waited with
OSX until it was a commercial release as well (yes, I know many people
say that it was still de-facto beta until 10.1 or 10.2 depending on
opinion).

 
> A lot of people who have Lisp-based code written for earlier versions
> of MCL are already porting this code to the new Carbon-based MCL 5,
> using the beta version of MCL 5.

Certainly for those people it makes perfect sense. No doubt about it.
However, I don't have any such requirements.

thanks
rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[niels freimann]

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Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[David Kastrup]

niels freimann <nfreimann@firemail.de> writes:

> <TABLE width="440" height="300" Class="mail_content" ALIGN="CENTER"><TR><TD VALIGN="TOP" style="position:relative;">From:  David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> 
> > Is "bk_usenet" an idiot or is he just trolling?
> 
> I am very disappointed that Germans behave most dogmatic and
> offending.

I just followed "bk_usenet"'s example in what he explicitly explained
to be his chosen style of equivocating attention.  It would be
impolite not to follow the rules he declared appropriate for effective
communication.

[Further HTML snipped]

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

I tried several builds of Aqua versions of Emacs on OSX and all of
them exhibit severe symptoms of crippleware. I would like to know if
those are supposed to work or are they just bugs.


1) No Drag and Drop - files

On a Mac you can just drag a file icon with the mouse onto an
application icon and the application will open the file.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Emacs, or so it would seem. Bug or
feature?


2) No Drag and Drop - text snippets

On a Mac you can just drag a snippet of text with the mouse from one
application and drag it directly into another application.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Emacs, or so it would seem. Bug or
feature?


3) Systemwide Clipboard - cut and paste

On a Mac you can cut or copy a text snippet to the clipboard while in
one application and then paste it back while in another application.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Emacs, or so it would seem. Bug or
feature?


4) HIG violations - quitting

On a Mac, all applications *must* quit when "Quit" is selected in the
applications main menu (the one that carries its name). Further,
applications *must* quit when the user choses "Quit" from the menu in
the application's dock item. Finally, Cmd-Q is the designated keyboard
shortcut for quitting.

Unfortunately, none of this works with Emacs, or so it would seem. Bug
or feature?


5) HIG violations - paste

On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
keyboard macros.

Unfortunately, "Paste", which is now Ctrl-y doesn't work at all,
neither from the keyboard nor from the Menu. Bug or feature?


6) Emacs keyboard shortcuts

Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work. Bug or feature?


7) User Preferences - Fonts

On just about every Mac application, you can set your preferred font
and size. It seems Emacs doesn't allow one to do that. How do you
change the font/size?

Bug or feature?


Note: These shortcomings were observed in Aqua versions of Emacs, they
may not apply to Xemacs and they may not apply to the commanline
version at /usr/bin/emacs. My questions are therefore directed
specifically at Aqua Emacs.

tia
rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Piet van Oostrum]

>>>>> bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) (B) wrote:

B> I tried several builds of Aqua versions of Emacs on OSX and all of
B> them exhibit severe symptoms of crippleware. I would like to know if
B> those are supposed to work or are they just bugs.

Apparently you didn't try the most recent one, the CVS version of the
official Emacs as this supports most of it. I wouldn't call it a crippled
version, although certain things have not yet been implemented. It is still
in development. It is called Carbon Emacs. If you don't want to compile it
yourself you can at least find an installable version by Enrico Franconi
(http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/). So I will answer your objections with
regard to this version.

B> 1) No Drag and Drop - files

B> On a Mac you can just drag a file icon with the mouse onto an
B> application icon and the application will open the file.

Works.

B> 2) No Drag and Drop - text snippets

B> On a Mac you can just drag a snippet of text with the mouse from one
B> application and drag it directly into another application.

I don't know if it has been implemented. I don't think so, and emacs' way
of working with the mouse is quite different from other applications, so I
think first some agreement must be made about how to do this.

B> 3) Systemwide Clipboard - cut and paste

B> On a Mac you can cut or copy a text snippet to the clipboard while in
B> one application and then paste it back while in another application.

Works.

B> 4) HIG violations - quitting

B> On a Mac, all applications *must* quit when "Quit" is selected in the
B> applications main menu (the one that carries its name). Further,
B> applications *must* quit when the user choses "Quit" from the menu in
B> the application's dock item. Finally, Cmd-Q is the designated keyboard
B> shortcut for quitting.

The Emacs keybinding for quit is C-x C-q. The problem is that if you use
the `standard' Mac keybindings you are non-standard with respect with
other emacsen. This also applies to the following items. Quit from the
Dock does quit emacs. Quit from the application menu is disabled, but
there really is not much reason for it as it works from the Dock. So it
could easily be enabled I think.

B> 5) HIG violations - paste

B> On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
B> but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
B> keyboard macros.

Same as above. The keybindings can be changed but then youhave to find
alternatives for the rebound keys. On Windows there is a cua.el and some
others that do this. It would be easy to adapt this to Mac style (Cmd-
rather than Control-).

B> Unfortunately, "Paste", which is now Ctrl-y doesn't work at all,
B> neither from the keyboard nor from the Menu. Bug or feature?

Works. Both menu and keyboard. In fact for Copy you don't need either.
Just select with the mouse (I think transient-mark-mode must be enabled for
this feature) and paste it in another application with Cmd-V.

B> 6) Emacs keyboard shortcuts

B> Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work. Bug or feature?

What do you mean?
I can use all normal Emacs keyboard commands.

B> 7) User Preferences - Fonts

B> On just about every Mac application, you can set your preferred font
B> and size. It seems Emacs doesn't allow one to do that. How do you
B> change the font/size?

Emacs has some special requirements for fonts I think. This area needs
some work. I haven't found a way to select a bigger font.

-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum@hccnet.nl

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <wzznm18yg2.fsf@nono.cs.uu.nl>,
Piet van Oostrum  <piet@cs.uu.nl> wrote:
>>>>>> bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) (B) wrote:
>B> 4) HIG violations - quitting
>
>B> On a Mac, all applications *must* quit when "Quit" is selected in the
>B> applications main menu (the one that carries its name). Further,
>B> applications *must* quit when the user choses "Quit" from the menu in
>B> the application's dock item. Finally, Cmd-Q is the designated keyboard
>B> shortcut for quitting.
>
>The Emacs keybinding for quit is C-x C-q. The problem is that if you use
>the `standard' Mac keybindings you are non-standard with respect with
>other emacsen.

Can't you have both?  Does Emacs usurp the Command key for something else?

>B> 5) HIG violations - paste
>
>B> On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
>B> but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
>B> keyboard macros.
>
>Same as above. The keybindings can be changed but then youhave to find
>alternatives for the rebound keys. On Windows there is a cua.el and some
>others that do this. It would be easy to adapt this to Mac style (Cmd-
>rather than Control-).

Again, can't you have both?  The standard Emacs key bindings use the
Control key, while the standard Macintosh shortcuts use the Command key, so
there shouldn't be any conflict.

>B> 6) Emacs keyboard shortcuts
>
>B> Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work. Bug or feature?
>
>What do you mean?
>I can use all normal Emacs keyboard commands.

I wonder if the OP is confusing the Command and Control keys.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, a Level(3) Company, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com> wrote ...


> I wonder if the OP is confusing the Command and Control keys.

Trust me, I have tried a large variety of both sensible and
nonsensical combinations. Also, I have evidence for Cmd (the Apple
key) being used as META, because if I do Cmd-x, I see "M-x" in the
minibuffer, and this is how I get ILISP to load OpenMCL, this is one
of the few combinations that work.

Likewise, I have evidence that Control is being used as CTRL because
if I do Ctrl-_ it does undo and displays "Undo!" in the minibuffer.
However, the all important C-x doesn't do anything at all. Go figure.

I really don't think any of you Emacs folks would like it. It's a
disaster.


rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl> wrote ...

> B> I tried several builds of Aqua versions of Emacs on OSX and all of
> B> them exhibit severe symptoms of crippleware. I would like to know if
> B> those are supposed to work or are they just bugs.
> 
> Apparently you didn't try the most recent one, the CVS version of the
> official Emacs as this supports most of it. I wouldn't call it a crippled
> version, although certain things have not yet been implemented. It is still
> in development. It is called Carbon Emacs. If you don't want to compile it
> yourself you can at least find an installable version by Enrico Franconi
> (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/).

Thanks. I haven't seen this one before. Just how many builds are
there? ;-)

> So I will answer your objections with
> regard to this version.
> 
> B> 2) No Drag and Drop - text snippets
> 
> I don't know if it has been implemented. I don't think so

doesn't really matter as long as there is some other (working) way to
paste between Emacs and other apps, and as you say clipboard
copy-pasting works, so I won't complain.


> B> 4) HIG violations - quitting
> 
> B> On a Mac, all applications *must* quit when "Quit" is selected in the
> B> applications main menu (the one that carries its name). Further,
> B> applications *must* quit when the user choses "Quit" from the menu in
> B> the application's dock item. Finally, Cmd-Q is the designated keyboard
> B> shortcut for quitting.
> 
> The Emacs keybinding for quit is C-x C-q.

Yes, but my Emacs is deaf on the <C-x> bit


> The problem is that if you use
> the `standard' Mac keybindings you are non-standard with respect with
> other emacsen.

Fair enough, but the trouble is that the only way I can quit is "force
quit". that's no good.

> This also applies to the following items. Quit from the
> Dock does quit emacs.

That's good news, because the ones I tried didn't.

> Quit from the application menu is disabled, but
> there really is not much reason for it as it works from the Dock.

Then it shouldn't be in the menu in the first place.

> So it
> could easily be enabled I think.

Buyer: "What do you mean, this car has the breaks disabled? Can I
break or not?"

Dealer: "Well, it could be enabled, I think. Then you *could* break,
yes"

;-)


> The keybindings can be changed but then youhave to find
> alternatives for the rebound keys.

No issue in principle, but if <C-y> doesn't work and text drag and
drop doesn't work, then Cmd-x/c/v are all of a sudden very essential.


> B> Unfortunately, "Paste", which is now Ctrl-y doesn't work at all,
> B> neither from the keyboard nor from the Menu. Bug or feature?
> 
> In fact for Copy you don't need either.
> Just select with the mouse (I think transient-mark-mode must be enabled for
> this feature) and paste it in another application with Cmd-V.

I am aware of that, but it didn't work.


> B> 6) Emacs keyboard shortcuts
> 
> B> Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work. Bug or feature?
> 
> What do you mean?

Well, I meant exactly what i said. Most of the shortcuts just don't
work. Emacs totally ignores them. There isn't even any feedback in the
minibuffer. I was lucky enough that <M-x> is amongst the few that do
work because this is how I get ILISP to give me a connection to my
external ("inferior") Common Lisp.

> I can use all normal Emacs keyboard commands.

Lucky you!


> B> 7) User Preferences - Fonts
> 
> Emacs has some special requirements for fonts I think. This area needs
> some work. I haven't found a way to select a bigger font.

Anyway, that's the least of my troubles.

but, thanks for the link, I'll try that version.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Piet van Oostrum]

I use Carbon Emacs on Mac OSX every day. In fact I use it more than any
other program. I do almost all my text editing, email and Usenet news with
Emacs. Also most HTML editing (occasionally I use Mozilla composer). I use
it to control LaTeX to produce PDF documents. I use even dired mode as much
as the Finder. I find it a versatile production tool.

I have chosen to use Command as the Meta key, rather than Option. The main
reason is that Option is used to produce non-ASCII characters like é, ü,
€, so I don't want to loose that feature (although emacs has other ways to
produce these characters, which I also use sometimes). Therefore the
Command key is not free for me, so I don't use Cmd-C, Cmd-V, Cmd-Q etc.
But as someone else has already indicated, you are free to use Option as
Meta key and install the proper commands on the Command keys. I could give
you the elisp commands in a few minutes if so desired.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum@hccnet.nl

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl> wrote ...

> I have chosen to use Command as the Meta key, rather than Option. The main
> reason is that Option is used to produce non-ASCII characters like é, ü,
> ¤, so I don't want to loose that feature (although emacs has other ways to
> produce these characters, which I also use sometimes). Therefore the
> Command key is not free for me, so I don't use Cmd-C, Cmd-V, Cmd-Q etc.
> But as someone else has already indicated, you are free to use Option as
> Meta key and install the proper commands on the Command keys. I could give
> you the elisp commands in a few minutes if so desired.

Thanks, this is helpful.

Now, we seem to have two different recommendations for the META key.
One says "use Option as META" the other says "use Cmd as META". As I
said before, this is supposed to go into a how to setup Emacs with
ILISP on OSX step by step guide and I have to take the target audience
into consideration.

It seems to me that I have to make a choice or present both
alternatives, possibly listing the pros and cons for each one, so that
readers can make an informed decision.

Would you have any opinion on that. What would you recommend someone
new to Emacs whose main interest is to get an IDE for doing some Lisp
(study or serious)? Probably they won't care so much about accented
characters because you don't really need that for writing Lisp code.
And if they haven't used Emacs before they might like to use
Cmd-/x/c/v for cut/copy/paste, although this may prevent them from
learning the Emacs method how to paste. As I see it, I will have to
provide both alternatives and let the reader choose for themselves.

So, if you could be so kind and let me have those commands, I would
appreciate that.

thanks
rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Benjamin Riefenstahl]

Hi bk,


bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:
> I tried several builds of Aqua versions of Emacs on OSX and all of
> them exhibit severe symptoms of crippleware.

I understand "crippleware" as an insult without any meaning when
applied to Emacs, but you hopefully didn't mean it that way.  Emacs is
a volunteer's effort, so it does exactly what *you* program for it or
have somebody else program for it.  Anything else is a free gift that
we all can only appreciate.  Note that I am only a user of the
program, too.

A lot of the Emacs users are people that are very glad that Emacs
works the same as they are used to on Unix, Linux or even Windows, so
they are not only willing to compromise with MacOSX guidelines, they
even demand that Emacs does that.  Not to mention that a lot of them
prefer an Emacs in any usable state instead of not having their
favorite tool at all (that would be me e.g.).

OTOH if you really don't like it and don't want or can't spend the
time to work it out, you are free, go ahead, get something else, there
are a number of capable editors for MacOSX around, free and
commercial.

> Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Emacs, or so it would seem. Bug
> or feature?

I read that as, you are not even sure that you have read and applied
all the relevant documentation, FAQs etc.  In that case it would be a
good idea to ask nicely how it's supposed to work, before even using
the word "bug".

As for your individual questions, please take all my remarks as just
my personal optinions, I don't speak for anybody but myself here.

> 1) No Drag and Drop - files
> 
> On a Mac you can just drag a file icon with the mouse onto an
> application icon and the application will open the file.

That's not the way Emacs works usually, although it may be a good idea
to implement it on MacOSX anyway.  The usual way is to have a separate
small command-line application "emacsclient" that talks to a server
stub that is started in Emacs.  It would probably not be to difficult
to add an AppleEvent interface to that for use by the Finder and other
applications and maybe that would be enough so it would work.  Or
something like that may even already exist, I haven't actually
checked.

Another thought (I haven't tried this).  It may be possible to create
an emacsclient.command script as a front for emacsclient that you can
put on your desktop and on which you can drop files.

Remember that the Finder with its AppleEvent-centered architecture is
just one of quite a lot of GUI shells in this world as far as Emacs is
concerned.  Therefore solutions that build on existing Emacs
techniques are more likely to work (and to work sooner) than
OS-specific solutions, even if the latter would look more polished.

> 2) No Drag and Drop - text snippets
> 
> On a Mac you can just drag a snippet of text with the mouse from one
> application and drag it directly into another application.

You want to implement that?  It is not something that Emacs has on
other platforms, I think, so it's probably on the very bottom of the
todo list of anybody else.

As a personal note, I know several Mac users and programmers and most
of them don't even know that feature, much less use it.  I also know
no Windows user that knows about that feature, although it does exist
on Windows with some applications.

> 3) Systemwide Clipboard - cut and paste
> 
> On a Mac you can cut or copy a text snippet to the clipboard while
> in one application and then paste it back while in another
> application.

This works.

In which way (and for what version of Emacs) doesn't it work for you?
You may be confused because Emacs uses different keyboard shortcuts
for cut-and-paste.  That's because Emacs defaults were there long
before MacOS was invented.

Some of the keyboard shortcuts can be added as configuration items,
but some are already taken for other crucial functions in Emacs.  This
is a problem, and I think the only solution currently is to use some
compromise.  But there are quite differnt types of users, so I think
everybody will have to find her/his own compromise on that, that's the
intention of Emacs' configurability after all.

For specifics, besides roll-your-own, look at cua-mode and
pc-selection-mode.

> 4) HIG violations - quitting

You mean MacOSX violating Emacs HIGs?  Emacs is pretty tolerant in
that area, you know, it accepts whatever the users implement,
thankfully it doesn't care about the dictates of any company.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that the MacOSX HIGs are bad, they
are just not gospel to me, so *must* and *can't* are not terms that I
associate with them.

> On a Mac, all applications *must* quit when "Quit" is selected in
> the applications main menu (the one that carries its name).
> Further, applications *must* quit when the user choses "Quit" from
> the menu in the application's dock item. Finally, Cmd-Q is the
> designated keyboard shortcut for quitting.

If you think so, you should configure your Emacs to do that, where is
the problem?  Cmd-Q doesn't have any crucial function in Emacs by
default, I believe, so you are free to do what you want.

> 5) HIG violations - paste
> 
> On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
> but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
> keyboard macros.

See above. 

> 6) Emacs keyboard shortcuts
> 
> Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work.

Not true.

Of course it's possible that something that you want to work one way,
actually works differently, or even that you really encountered some
isolated bugs, or something that isn't implemented.  But than you'd
have to be specific with what you did, what you expected to happen as
a result, and what happened instead.  And you want to give some data
on your environment, like your Emacs version, and packages you had
installed and activated when your did what you did.  Oh, and it helps
to be polite and nice, too.

> 7) User Preferences - Fonts
> 
> On just about every Mac application, you can set your preferred font
> and size. It seems Emacs doesn't allow one to do that. How do you
> change the font/size?

You can change the font, but I think this area is work-in-progress
even at the function level, not to mention user interface.  My latest
problems with that were that Carbon still uses that stupid MacRoman as
a font encoding, which is hardly Emacs' fault.  Yes, we should use
ATSU, but than I'm not doing the work, so I don't complain. 


Hope this helps, benny

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Benjamin Riefenstahl <Benjamin.Riefenstahl@epost.de> wrote ...

> I understand "crippleware" as an insult without any meaning when
> applied to Emacs, but you hopefully didn't mean it that way.

Crippleware is software that has things left out on purpose which
other versions of the same software have, whether for marketing
reasons or because the developers haven't had the time yet to
implement them doesn't really matter.


> Not to mention that a lot of them
> prefer an Emacs in any usable state instead of not having their
> favorite tool at all (that would be me e.g.).

Same here, but it has got to be in a "usable state". None of the ones
I have tried come even close to being usable.

> OTOH if you really don't like it and don't want or can't spend the
> time to work it out, you are free, go ahead, get something else, there
> are a number of capable editors for MacOSX around, free and
> commercial.

See, I give a damn about that excuse for an editor. All I want to do
is play with Common Lisp, OpenMCL to be precise. Everybody says you
must have Emacs and ILISP to get an IDE for whatever Lisp system you
use. So, I spent already one full week trying to get the recommended
editor working. That's one week wasted which I could have spent doing
CL already. Emacs is a road block. People on the lisp newsgroup have
been very helpful getting ILISP to work and I promised the authors
that I would write a section for their user guide for OSX users who,
like myself will run into the same problem if they want to do Lisp.
You can check out the various mailing lists, they are full with people
who have problems getting past Emacs.

As far as I am concerned, I probably won't touch Emacs with a
barchpole for quite some time. But I have promised to write a section
for the ILISP user guide and I intend to keep that promise. So far
this is incomplete because at the very least, the Common Lisp
HyperSpec must work. So, I will try to find fixes and workarounds so
that I can incorporate them into the documentation. If I can't find
any, well fine, I will just document the shortcomings then.

If you have a Mac, you may want to take a look at Alpaca. This is a
Carbon application, writting in Common Lisp, built with OpenMCL using
Cocoa. It is an Editor like Emacs, it is programmable/configurable in
Common Lisp (not unlike Emacs) and supports drag and drop and
everything else, even Emacs keybindings. Yes, unlike the Emacs builds
I have tried for which the keybindings did not work, they work in
Alpaca. And this has been written by just one guy in his spare time
over the last few months or so. BLESS HIM!!!

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=79717

That's likely what I am going to use.


> I read that as, you are not even sure that you have read and applied
> all the relevant documentation, FAQs etc.  In that case it would be a
> good idea to ask nicely how it's supposed to work, before even using
> the word "bug".

I did read all the docs I could get hold off, but they are written for
Gnu Emacs and/or XEmacs, so there is no way of knowing whether
something has been left out of the Carbon version other than to ask.


> > On a Mac you can just drag a file icon with the mouse onto an
> > application icon and the application will open the file.
> 
> That's not the way Emacs works usually, although it may be a good idea
> to implement it on MacOSX anyway.

Well, I happen to have used some other applications that were
originally X apps and have been ported to the Mac. Typically, the
authors take great pride in making their ports real Mac applications
that take advantage of the Mac environment, ie. such things as drap
and drop.


> Another thought (I haven't tried this).  It may be possible to create
> an emacsclient.command script as a front for emacsclient that you can
> put on your desktop and on which you can drop files.

Sure, but if I'd have to add an extra icon for each application I use
just to bolt on file drag and drop, my dock would get even more
cluttered than it already is.


> > 2) No Drag and Drop - text snippets
> > 
> > On a Mac you can just drag a snippet of text with the mouse from one
> > application and drag it directly into another application.
> 
> You want to implement that?  It is not something that Emacs has on
> other platforms, I think, so it's probably on the very bottom of the
> todo list of anybody else.

Well, Alpaca has this in its 0.4 release. Peanuts.


> As a personal note, I know several Mac users and programmers and most
> of them don't even know that feature, much less use it.  I also know
> no Windows user that knows about that feature, although it does exist
> on Windows with some applications.

I don't really care which one of the copy/paste methods work. However,
I would expect at least one method to work. Because right now I can't
copy and paste between Emacs and other apps at all. That's no good.


> > 3) Systemwide Clipboard - cut and paste
> > 
> > On a Mac you can cut or copy a text snippet to the clipboard while
> > in one application and then paste it back while in another
> > application.
> 
> This works.
> 
> In which way (and for what version of Emacs) doesn't it work for you?

As I said I have tried a handful of Carbon builds and it worked with
none of them.

> You may be confused because Emacs uses different keyboard shortcuts
> for cut-and-paste.

No. Ctrl-y (or <C-y> in Emacs lingo) doesn't respond and in the menu
it is greyed out.

> That's because Emacs defaults were there long
> before MacOS was invented.

Who cares. Give me one method that works and if I can actually
replicate it I will document it. I am not going to document something
i can't replicate and then if people complain, all I have to say is
"someone on usenet said it works this way".


> Some of the keyboard shortcuts can be added as configuration items,
> but some are already taken for other crucial functions in Emacs.  This
> is a problem, and I think the only solution currently is to use some
> compromise.  But there are quite differnt types of users, so I think
> everybody will have to find her/his own compromise on that, that's the
> intention of Emacs' configurability after all.

There is no compromise it things like paste <C-y> and quit <C-x> <C-c>
don't work out of the box.


> > 4) HIG violations - quitting
> 
> You mean MacOSX violating Emacs HIGs?  Emacs is pretty tolerant in
> that area, you know, it accepts whatever the users implement,
> thankfully it doesn't care about the dictates of any company.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that the MacOSX HIGs are bad, they
> are just not gospel to me, so *must* and *can't* are not terms that I
> associate with them.

I am sorry but you are talking complete nonsense here. We are talking
about a way to quit the application. If the application provides a
menu that says "Quit" then it should quit if your choose "Quit". If
the implementor doesn't want you to quit from the menu, then why put
"Quit" in there in the first place?

Likewise, if the dock menu says "Quit" then the application must quit
when you select "Quit". What you are saying is that it would be OK to
write an application for Unix that doesn't respond to HUP or KILL,
simply because the application was ported from some mainframe where
there were no such signals to quit an application.

If it says "Quit" and I select it, then I want it to quit. Anything
else is *BS*.


> If you think so, you should configure your Emacs to do that, where is
> the problem?  Cmd-Q doesn't have any crucial function in Emacs by
> default, I believe, so you are free to do what you want.

Great stuff. You are telling me that it is OK to release an
application that has no other way to be terminated than by using
"force quit" and if I question this, you tell me I should write my own
code to give the application the quit feature that is missing from it.
If you think that this is alright, I can't even begin to imagine what
it takes for you to find something bizarr.

> 
> > 5) HIG violations - paste
> > 
> > On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
> > but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
> > keyboard macros.
> 
> See above.

No, not see above. You have ignored the most vital part of my post
which said that whatever I do, paste just doesn't work, not the Mac
way nor the Emacs way, nor any other way.


> > 6) Emacs keyboard shortcuts
> > 
> > Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work.
> 
> Not true.

Ah, you are calling me a liar now? Get this: They don't work and there
has just been a posting in comp.sys.mac.apps by a guy who had the same
problem. i have even fired up the old VAX and telneted into the Mac to
see what /usr/bin/emacs does when remotely accessed from there. No
keyboard shortcuts work. The other way (telnet from Mac to VAX, using
Emacs on the VAX) works with /usr/bin/emacs. Of course the Carbon
version cannot be remotely accessed, but it exhibits similar keyboard
shortcut deafness.

> 
> Of course it's possible that something that you want to work one way,
> actually works differently, or even that you really encountered some
> isolated bugs, or something that isn't implemented.

I don't care if it works differently. What I do care is when vital
things such as paste and quit don't work at all, whichever way.


> have to be specific with what you did, what you expected to happen as
> a result, and what happened instead.  And you want to give some data
> on your environment, like your Emacs version, and packages you had
> installed and activated when your did what you did.

The least broken build I have is 21.1.30, OSX 10.1.5 and another Mac
with OSX 10.2.5. Both same behavior.

When I say the keyboard shortcuts don't work at all, I mean exactly
that. For example, normally when you do <C-x> you would get feedback
in the minibuffer at the bottom of the editor window. Well, it doesn't
even do that. For most of the keyboard shortcuts it is just deaf,
Emacs simply ignores them.

And all I loaded at startup was ILISP, which is what many people use,
so there is nothing fishy in there. In fact I got the configuration
file from a guy who is adminstering a few OSX boxes at Berkeley and
all of those machines have the same ILISP setup. They use XEmacs
though.

That's why I ask the questions whether there is anything missing in
the Carbon ports that hasn't been finished yet. It is of no use if I
am trying to fix something that isn't there yet.

> Oh, and it helps
> to be polite and nice, too.

Just because you get offended by the word crippleware doesn't make my
post impolite.


> > 7) User Preferences - Fonts
> > 
> > On just about every Mac application, you can set your preferred font
> > and size. It seems Emacs doesn't allow one to do that. How do you
> > change the font/size?
> 
> You can change the font, but I think this area is work-in-progress

fair enough. this is anyway the least of all worries. Although, some
people may find the font too small to read on higher resolutions.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Niels Freimann]

On Monday 05 May 2003 23:52, BK wrote:
>
> Crippleware is software that has things left out on purpose which
> other versions of the same software have, whether for marketing
> reasons or because the developers haven't had the time yet to
> implement them doesn't really matter

I agree - It wasn't an insult. The mac community always was very 
strict with regards to the UI guidelines. Thats something hard to 
understand for the *NIX community. 

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> Benjamin Riefenstahl <Benjamin.Riefenstahl@epost.de> wrote ...
>
>> I understand "crippleware" as an insult without any meaning when
>> applied to Emacs, but you hopefully didn't mean it that way.
>
> Crippleware is software that has things left out on purpose which
> other versions of the same software have, whether for marketing
> reasons or because the developers haven't had the time yet to
> implement them doesn't really matter.

It does, since the term "crippleware" refers to the intention, as you
say, and the intention is entirely different. Not using Mac OS I
don't have an idea whether the particular Emacs version you have is
not fully ported to Mac OS or whether your installation is simply
broken. But if the former, it is called "alpha version" or
"pre-release" in the free software world. ("free" as in "free speech"
not as in "free beer").

[...]
>> OTOH if you really don't like it and don't want or can't spend the
>> time to work it out, you are free, go ahead, get something else, there
>> are a number of capable editors for MacOSX around, free and
>> commercial.
>
> See, I give a damn about that excuse for an editor.
[...]
> Emacs is a road block. 
[...]
> As far as I am concerned, I probably won't touch Emacs with a
> barchpole for quite some time. But I have promised to write a section
> for the ILISP user guide and I intend to keep that promise.
[...]

I guess, if you explain your attitude towards Emacs to the people to
whom you gave your promise, they will kindly release you from it.

    Oliver
-- 
17 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Benjamin Riefenstahl]

Hi BK,


bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:
> Crippleware is software that has things left out on purpose which
> other versions of the same software have, whether for marketing
> reasons or because the developers haven't had the time yet to
> implement them doesn't really matter.

Sorry, but in my understanding "haven't had the time" != "on purpose"
and "left out" != "not implemented yet."  Also remember that the
"time" about which we are talking is free time that people could just
as spend with family, hobbies or dancing.  You don't have any right to
make any demands on anybody here.

> Just because you get offended by the word crippleware doesn't make
> my post impolite.

Well, if you yourself don't recognise what you are doing, that just
makes things worse.  You either live in a world of your own, or
your're trolling on purpose.

> Benjamin Riefenstahl <Benjamin.Riefenstahl@epost.de> wrote ...
> > Not to mention that a lot of them prefer an Emacs in any usable
> > state instead of not having their favorite tool at all
> 
> Same here, but it has got to be in a "usable state". None of the
> ones I have tried come even close to being usable.

There are lots of people using Emacs on MacOSX quite happily.  "You
don't like it" != "not usable for somebody."

> Everybody says you must have Emacs and ILISP to get an IDE for
> whatever Lisp system you use.  [...]  You can check out the various
> mailing lists, they are full with people who have problems getting
> past Emacs.

These two statements seem to contradict each other.  If people have
problems use Emacs on MacOSX for *any* reason, they won't get
productive with it for OpenMCL or anything.  You may want to complain
to those people recommending Emacs for the wrong audience, not to us.
You also may want to ask *them* which version of Emacs works for them.

> I did read all the docs I could get hold off, but they are written
> for Gnu Emacs

Carbon Emacs *is* GNU Emacs.  If there is something in the docs that
doesn't work as stated, either it's still a todo, or it's a bug in the
program or the docs.

It seems that there is (or was) a misunderstanding here.  There is no
official release of Emacs for MacOSX yet.  MacOSX code is currently
integrated into the official source code, and you can get that code
from CVS.  At some point in time some people have made binaries
available that they compiled themself.

There were a couple of tries to port GNU Emacs to MacOSX before that,
but they all have been abandoned, I think.  So it would not suprise me
if these earlier ports don't work with current versions of MacOSX, or
if they were seriously incomplete.  Still none of them would have been
posted, if they didn't at least work for their authors.

You have already been given the two URLs:

  http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/
  http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/mac-emacs/

I suggest you use them, try the recent binary and come back to us in a
better mood. 


Some other notes in passing:

> > > On a Mac you can just drag a file icon with the mouse onto an
> > > application icon and the application will open the file.

Actually I just checked (I wasn't at my Mac the last time) and this
works fine in the current version.

> > > 2) No Drag and Drop - text snippets
> 
> Well, Alpaca has this in its 0.4 release. Peanuts.

Of course it's peanuts.  Does Alpaca have all the other features that
Emacs has?  A lot of those are also just peanuts.

> No. Ctrl-y (or <C-y> in Emacs lingo) doesn't respond and in the menu
> it is greyed out.

It's probably grayed out, because there is nothing in Emacs' internal
kill-ring currently, which is (to Emacs) the primary source of a
paste.  A reasonable point that, maybe something could be done about
it.

> There is no compromise it things like paste <C-y> and quit <C-x>
> <C-c> don't work out of the box.

I meant compromise about which keys to actually use.  As I already
said, the feature itself works here.

> the application provides a menu that says "Quit" then it should quit
> if your choose "Quit".

I have a menu item in my Emacs at the standard Emacs location that
says "Exit Emacs (C-x C-k)" and it quits the application.  I also have
the Apple-HIG-demanded "Quit Emacs" in another menu that is grayed
out, probably because nobody needed it yet.

> If the implementor doesn't want you to quit from the menu, then why
> put "Quit" in there in the first place?

It may have been put there by the OS e.g., trying to enforce HIG.

> Likewise, if the dock menu says "Quit" then the application must
> quit when you select "Quit".

And it does here. 

> You have ignored the most vital part of my post which said that
> whatever I do, paste just doesn't work, not the Mac way nor the
> Emacs way, nor any other way.

I didn't ignore it, I said that it *does* work here. 

> > > Most of the Emacs keyboard shortcuts don't work.
> > 
> > Not true.
> 
> Ah, you are calling me a liar now?

Sorry, I meant "Not true *here*."

> i have even fired up the old VAX and telneted into the Mac to see
> what /usr/bin/emacs does when remotely accessed from there. No
> keyboard shortcuts work.

On simple terminals a lot of keyboard combinations do not exist as far
as the terminal is concerned.  Sometimes the terminal can be changed
and reconfigured (which often involves both sides, server and client),
sometimes not.  None of that can be helped by Emacs itself, it's
outside of its control.  It is a very well known problem for apps
using a lot of keyboard combinations.  That's the main reason why I
mostly use vi for editing in terminal sessions ;-).

> The least broken build I have is 21.1.30, OSX 10.1.5

I am not sure 10.1 is still supported by the Emacs code, Apple makes
it not easy to do that.

> For most of the keyboard shortcuts it is just deaf, Emacs simply
> ignores them.

I assume that C-h l (or M-x view-lossage) doesn't work either.  If it
did, it would show which events Emacs actually has seen recently.


so long, benny

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Henrik Enberg]

Benjamin Riefenstahl <Benjamin.Riefenstahl@epost.de> writes:

> If you think so, you should configure your Emacs to do that, where is
> the problem?  Cmd-Q doesn't have any crucial function in Emacs by
> default, I believe, so you are free to do what you want.

Is Cmd the Apple version of Control, Meta or something else entirely?

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <878ytl3to2.fsf@enberg.org>,
Henrik Enberg  <henrik+news@enberg.org> wrote:
>Benjamin Riefenstahl <Benjamin.Riefenstahl@epost.de> writes:
>
>> If you think so, you should configure your Emacs to do that, where is
>> the problem?  Cmd-Q doesn't have any crucial function in Emacs by
>> default, I believe, so you are free to do what you want.
>
>Is Cmd the Apple version of Control, Meta or something else entirely?

Macs (except some of the very earliest Apple keyboards) have three modifier
keys: Control, Option, and Command.  I would expect Control to be used for
Control, Option to be used for Meta, and Command to be reserved for
implementing standard Macintosh shortcuts.  I think most Macintosh terminal
emulators have been doing things for years.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, a Level(3) Company, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[tristero]

In article <lQBta.26$J33.1166@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>, Barry Margolin wrote:
> Macs (except some of the very earliest Apple keyboards) have three modifier
> keys: Control, Option, and Command.  I would expect Control to be used for
> Control, Option to be used for Meta, and Command to be reserved for
> implementing standard Macintosh shortcuts.  

The carbon emacs port can use either Option or Command as meta;
whichever one isn't Meta becomes Alt.  It's configured by the variable
mac-command-key-is-meta.  At one point the default value of this
variable was t.  I set it to nil explicitly in ~/.emacs so that the
behavior matches emacs in an osx Terminal and also in X11 (with a
sensible .xmodmap): in my environment all three use Option for meta (I
never use Alt in emacs).

As for the carbon port not matching Aqua conventions, it's hard to
know what to say. The carbon port is functionally outstanding; it
deserves nothing but praise imo.  The OP's contention that the lack of
predefined support for Cmd-q makes this "crippleware" or "broken" is
truly an amazing feat of pettiness, even for usenet.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

tristero <tristero@waste.net> wrote ...

> The carbon emacs port can use either Option or Command as meta;
> whichever one isn't Meta becomes Alt.  It's configured by the variable
> mac-command-key-is-meta.  At one point the default value of this
> variable was t.  I set it to nil explicitly in ~/.emacs so that the
> behavior matches emacs in an osx Terminal and also in X11 (with a
> sensible .xmodmap): in my environment all three use Option for meta (I
> never use Alt in emacs).

Thank you. This looks like something constructive can come out of it.
As I mentioned, I have reason to believe that on the Emacs I use Cmd
is used as META because Cmd-x produces <M-x> (one of the few keyboard
shortcuts that do work).

Now, considering that I intend to put this all down in a step-by-step
guide for ILISP newbies, it will quite obviously have the effect of a
recommendation if it says something like "do this and this to make
Option your META key".

Therefore, before I ask you how to do this, let me first ask you
whether you believe that making Option to become META is a good thing
to recommend to people who are less interested in Emacs, but whose
main objective is to set up an IDE to either study or work in Lisp?
Also, people who will need that guide are probably inexperienced.
Someone who has been using Emacs on another platform before and knows
his way around is unlikely to need a someone like myself to tell him
how to set up Emacs with ILISP.

So, considering the target audience, is it a reasonable recommendation
to make Option to become META?

If so, the next question is how exactly do you do it? What is the
command that goes into ~/.emacs ? Further, as there are various things
in ~/.ilisp, what do I need to look out for to make sure there is no
side effect on ILISP? By that I mean how can I check that making
Option to become META will not break some keyboard related command
within ~/.ilisp ? Or is there no danger of that?


> As for the carbon port not matching Aqua conventions, it's hard to
> know what to say. The carbon port is functionally outstanding; it
> deserves nothing but praise imo.  The OP's contention that the lack of
> predefined support for Cmd-q makes this "crippleware" or "broken" is
> truly an amazing feat of pettiness, even for usenet.

You read something into my post that clearly isn't there. I didn't say
that not adhering to Apple keyboard shortcuts make Emacs crippled or
broken. What I said was that (a) not having *any* pasting method
(neither Mac nor Emacs methods) working; *plus* (b) not having *any*
quit-application method (neither Mac nor Emacs methods) *plus* (c) not
having the majority of Emacs keyboard shortcuts work, all of that make
it either crippled or broken.

The fact of the matter is that I cannot do any pasting, no matter what
method I use. As other versions of Emacs do support pasting, the
absence of pasting in the Aqua version would indeed make it crippled
in relation to other Emacs versions if this was intentional.

Likewise, I cannot quit Emacs other than by forcing it (kill -9). As
other versions of Emacs do support quitting the application, the
absence of quitting in the Aqua version of Emacs would indeed make it
crippled in relation to other Emacs versions if this was intentional.

But even then, I gave Emacs the benefit of doubt and I did not call it
crippleware. I said it did "exhibit severe symptoms of crippleware".
Then I described each observation and for each observation I asked
whether this was supposed to be that way (feature) or not (bug). I
know many people don't read thoroughly enough and only pick up a few
words, but that is hardly my fault.

The only thing you can accuse me of is that I said "excuse for an
editor" which was in the context of being nitpicked and flamed. If
there are any Emacs Aqua developers who take offense by that
heat-of-the-moment statement, then I apologise for that, but anything
else I said was fair and just.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <39d9c156.0305070651.fca584@posting.google.com>,
BK <bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>The fact of the matter is that I cannot do any pasting, no matter what
>method I use. As other versions of Emacs do support pasting, the
>absence of pasting in the Aqua version would indeed make it crippled
>in relation to other Emacs versions if this was intentional.
>
>Likewise, I cannot quit Emacs other than by forcing it (kill -9). As
>other versions of Emacs do support quitting the application, the
>absence of quitting in the Aqua version of Emacs would indeed make it
>crippled in relation to other Emacs versions if this was intentional.

It sounds like something is severely screwed up in your configuration, if
the traditional Emacs keys don't work.  Control-y should paste, and
Control-x Control-c should quit.  This is how Emacs is supposed to work on
*every* platform, and there's certainly no intention that it not work on
Aqua.  If it's not working for you, you need to do some investigation into
what's going on.  Maybe some environment customization is filtering out the
keystrokes before Emacs sees them.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, a Level(3) Company, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com> wrote ...

> It sounds like something is severely screwed up in your configuration,

Thank you. I almost thought I was the only one who finds this
behaviour odd.

> if the traditional Emacs keys don't work.  Control-y should paste, and
> Control-x Control-c should quit.

That's good news.

> This is how Emacs is supposed to work on *every* platform, and there's
> certainly no intention that it not work on Aqua.

Well, there is always a possibility that the implementor decided to do
certain things later and instead provide Mac style alternatives in the
interim. I certainly wasn't in the position to rule this out.

> If it's not working for you, you need to do some investigation into
> what's going on.  Maybe some environment customization is filtering out the
> keystrokes before Emacs sees them.

I have ILISP active, but it doesn't change anything if I don't load
ILISP and the only thing in my .emacs file is the command to load
ILISP. Is there anything else which I wouldn't be aware of?

rgds
bk

PS: I am not the only one having these and similar problems. I have
made contact with a few other Lisp newbies who use OSX and they also
have reported a variety of Emacs keyboard shortcuts that don't seem to
work.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[David Eppstein]

In article <39d9c156.0305071548.581e848@posting.google.com>,
 bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) wrote:

> > if the traditional Emacs keys don't work.  Control-y should paste, and
> > Control-x Control-c should quit.
> 
> That's good news.

Maybe not as good as you think...  I think barmar actually means that 
control-y should paste something that you have copied or cut within the 
same emacs session.  Whether there is any way in the default config to 
paste from a different application is unclear.

-- 
David Eppstein                      http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <39d9c156.0305071548.581e848@posting.google.com>,
BK <bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com> wrote ...
>> If it's not working for you, you need to do some investigation into
>> what's going on.  Maybe some environment customization is filtering out the
>> keystrokes before Emacs sees them.
>
>I have ILISP active, but it doesn't change anything if I don't load
>ILISP and the only thing in my .emacs file is the command to load
>ILISP. Is there anything else which I wouldn't be aware of?

I was talking about MacOS customizations (extensions in pre-OSX days --
I've still not made the leap to OSX myself), not Emacs customizations.
My guess is that something is preventing these control keystrokes from
being passed to Emacs.

Does the C-h key work to bring up the help options?  If so, what does "C-h
k C-y" show?

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, a Level(3) Company, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

[...]
> 5) HIG violations - paste
>
> On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
> but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
> keyboard macros.
[...]

I always find this kind of statement[1] quite funny. It is like a
school-kid saying: "Why don't the people abroad speak German? It would
be so much easier for them to talk to each other if they did not
insist of using foreign languages at home."

    Oliver

Follow-up set to the proper forum.

Footnotes: 
[1]  I am referring to the "normal" part, of course and to the
implicit sentiment, that C-w/M-w/C-y is not "natural".
-- 
17 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...

> > On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
> > but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
> > keyboard macros.
> 
> It is like a school-kid saying: "Why don't the people abroad speak
> German? It would be so much easier for them to talk to each other if they
> did not insist of using foreign languages at home."

Wrong example. You just shot yourself in the foot. :-)

On the Mac, HIG is the local custom and therefore it is only
reasonable to expecrt that any foreign application coming to Mac land
can will respect the native customs and accept them as being normal,
while its own foreign customs, although they might be accepted, will
remain foreign.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Jerry Kindall]

In article <39d9c156.0305060558.7cba26d9@posting.google.com>, BK
<bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...
> 
> > > On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
> > > but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
> > > keyboard macros.
> > 
> > It is like a school-kid saying: "Why don't the people abroad speak
> > German? It would be so much easier for them to talk to each other if they
> > did not insist of using foreign languages at home."
> 
> Wrong example. You just shot yourself in the foot. :-)
> 
> On the Mac, HIG is the local custom and therefore it is only
> reasonable to expecrt that any foreign application coming to Mac land
> can will respect the native customs and accept them as being normal,
> while its own foreign customs, although they might be accepted, will
> remain foreign.

No, you've got it backwards.  When you launch Emacs, you tell your Mac
"I want to travel to Emacs-land" and implicitly accept its foreign
customs.  Emacs is practically an OS of its own -- it includes a
Turing-complete programming language with which mail and news readers,
and other applications, have been implemented, all inside the editor. 
In short, launching Emacs and complaining about the keyboard shortcuts
is like launching Windows under Virtual PC and complaining that all the
windows are funny-looking.

If Emacs worked like a Mac program, it wouldn't be Emacs anymore...

-- 
Jerry Kindall, Seattle, WA          http://www.jerrykindall.com/

If replying to this message by e-mail, send plain text only.
Replies with files or HTML will be deleted by my spam filters.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[David Kastrup]

Jerry Kindall <jerrykindall@nospam.invalid> writes:

> No, you've got it backwards.  When you launch Emacs, you tell your
> Mac "I want to travel to Emacs-land" and implicitly accept its
> foreign customs.  Emacs is practically an OS of its own -- it
> includes a Turing-complete programming language with which mail and
> news readers, and other applications, have been implemented, all
> inside the editor.  In short, launching Emacs and complaining about
> the keyboard shortcuts is like launching Windows under Virtual PC
> and complaining that all the windows are funny-looking.
> 
> If Emacs worked like a Mac program, it wouldn't be Emacs anymore...

Emacs dresses a lot more like the locals than XEmacs does (which looks
pretty much the same anywhere).  Apart from that, the land of the
Emacsen is by now almost like Belgium: you can talk in various idioms
and get understood.  There is the slightly augmented form of the
original French (as in freedom fries) with terms like "nonante" and
"(cua-mode 1)", but you can also expect to find people speaking Dutch,
viper-mode or even wordstar-mode or German.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <060520030745372240%jerrykindall@nospam.invalid>,
Jerry Kindall  <usenet@jerrykindall.com> wrote:
>No, you've got it backwards.  When you launch Emacs, you tell your Mac
>"I want to travel to Emacs-land" and implicitly accept its foreign
>customs.

So when you launch Internet Explorer, do you expect it to look like it does
on Windows?

One difference, though, is that Emacs is significantly older than either of
these GUIs.  Also, Emacs is pretty much defined by its UI; if it adopted
the UI of the surrounding environment, it wouldn't really be the same
editor.  It would be like Bozo the Clown visiting the Middle East and
putting on a turban -- his hair is his trademark.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, a Level(3) Company, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Jerry Kindall]

In article <KIQta.14$_74.899@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>, Barry Margolin
<barry.margolin@level3.com> wrote:

> In article <060520030745372240%jerrykindall@nospam.invalid>,
> Jerry Kindall  <usenet@jerrykindall.com> wrote:
> >No, you've got it backwards.  When you launch Emacs, you tell your Mac
> >"I want to travel to Emacs-land" and implicitly accept its foreign
> >customs.
> 
> So when you launch Internet Explorer, do you expect it to look like it does
> on Windows?

Not really; IE doesn't create that kind of expectation.

-- 
Jerry Kindall, Seattle, WA          http://www.jerrykindall.com/

If replying to this message by e-mail, send plain text only.
Replies with files or HTML will be deleted by my spam filters.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Jerry Kindall <jerrykindall@nospam.invalid> wrote ...

> > On the Mac, HIG is the local custom and therefore it is only
> > reasonable to expecrt that any foreign application coming to Mac land
> > can will respect the native customs and accept them as being normal,
> > while its own foreign customs, although they might be accepted, will
> > remain foreign.
> 
> No, you've got it backwards.  When you launch Emacs, you tell your Mac
> "I want to travel to Emacs-land" and implicitly accept its foreign
> customs.

In other words it's a gateway/compatibility application. Fair enough,
I don't necessarily have a problem with that view, but the issue
Mr.Scholz raised was purely about my choice of language when I
referred to Apple style keyboard shortcuts. Therefore, my response was
only supposed to address his objection to my chosing the word
"normal". It was not meant to suggest that anyone can conclude from
this that the Emacs shortcuts are wrong or bad or inacceptable.

The point was that on a Mac, it will have to be permissible to call
Apple style shortcuts "normal" without being flamed for that choice of
language.

In other words, I felt that there was a very strong likelihood that
Mr.Sholz may have been overreacting to the term "normal" not being
applied in his own favourite way and I didn't want to put it to him in
such direct terms. So, instead I chose to use his metaphor to answer.

> Emacs is practically an OS of its own -- it includes a
> Turing-complete programming language with which mail and news readers,
> and other applications, have been implemented, all inside the editor. 
> In short, launching Emacs and complaining about the keyboard shortcuts
> is like launching Windows under Virtual PC and complaining that all the
> windows are funny-looking.

Ah, you didn't read my post then, did you? First, I didn't complain,
certainly not about which flavour of shortcuts should prevail. I
described various observations and asked for each of them whether or
not I was to expect that kind of behaviour (feature) or not (bug).

If the answer to all of those items had been, "Yep, it is supposed to
be that way", I'd have said "OK, fair enough, but how am I supposed to
paste and how am I supposed to quit and why does this book I have that
lists all those Emacs keyboard shortcuts get it so wrong?"

OTOH, if the answer had been, "No this is supposed to work", then I'd
have said "OK, how can I fix it?"

Unfortunately people chose to nitpick on a few narrow things and flame
me, trying to make me look bad in the process.

I don't really care how pasting is done with Emacs, but I expect there
to be at least one method that works. So if the Emacs way of pasting
doesn't seem to work, then I try various Mac specific methods and see
if any of them work. After all it is a Mac port of Emacs, so there is
the odd chance that the developers have put a higher priority on the
Mac methods than on the Emacs methods. How would I know. So, just to
make sure I covered each and every possibility I can think of, I
listed them all and then, not knowing whether they are actually
supposed to work, I asked if this was to be expected.

If the Emacs methods had worked, I might still have tried the Mac
methods, but I would then have assumed that it was not intended to
give Emacs those methods if they hadn't worked. However, what I
experienced was that no method worked and it struck me as odd, because
the state that this Emacs is in is definitely not usable for editing.

Although I have mentioned and described this again and again, most
people have chosen to ignore the fact that I cannot paste *at all* and
that I cannot quit other than by using kill -9.

Instead they have chosen to nitpick on things like the use of the word
"normal" when referring to the Apple style keyboard shortcuts. If you
thoroughly read my post, you will find that I first described how it
works on a Mac, then saying that it doesn't work that way on Emacs
*followed* by a comment that this is not really a problem because if
you wanted Apple style shortcuts, Emacs does allow customisation to
turn this back to "normal". What's wrong with that?

What I did describe as a real problem was the fact that neihter the
Mac nor the Emacs method for pasting worked, leaving me without any
way to paste *at all*.

 
> If Emacs worked like a Mac program, it wouldn't be Emacs anymore...

Perhaps this is so, but I think if you were to try to use the Emacs
that I have been struggling with, you would very likely say that it
isn't Emacs anymore either, not because of any Macintoshisms but
because it is simply not in a usable state.

Then again, if you are an Emacs old-hand, you'd probably have all that
fixed in less than a minute and ask, what's all the fuzz about,
nothing wrong with it, only misconfigured (or whatever).

The trouble is, I am totally stuck because I am not an Emacs old-hand
and I don't have a clue how to fix it. And by "fix" I don't mean to
make it use Mac style shortcuts, at least not necessarily.

Do I think that an Aqua Emacs *should* open files when dropping them
on the Emacs icon? Yes, I think it should. Am I going to make a stink
if I am told it doesn't? No, I won't.

Do I think that an Aqua Emacs *should* allow mouse dragged text
snippets to be dropped in? Usually I would take it as a pleasant
surprise, but in the *absence of any other way to paste*, I am
inclined to expect it as a possible subsitute for pasting.

Do I think that an Aqua Emacs *should* quit when one chooses "Quit" in
the application menu or in the dock menu. Yes, I think it should. Am I
going to make a stink if I am told it doesn't? No, I won't, but I will
wonder what the developer was thinking when he put the "Quit" option
into the menu.

Do I think that an Aqua Emacs *should* provide all the Mac style
keyboard shortcuts? I honestly can't tell, but if the corresponding
Emacs shortcuts don't work, I'd say then at least the Mac style
shortcuts should work instead. Am I going to make a stink if I am told
it doesn't support Mac style shortcuts. No, I won't, but I will call
it severely broken if most of the Emacs shortcuts are deaf *and* the
Mac style shortcuts don't work either.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Phil Stripling]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

>SNIP< 
> Unfortunately people chose to nitpick on a few narrow things and flame
> me, trying to make me look bad in the process.
>SNIP<

I must admit I'm confused. _Who_ chose to nitpick a few narrow things? Who
chose to flame? Who looks bad in the process?

You speak for yourself. Again.
-- 
Philip Stripling                | email to the replyto address is presumed
Legal Assistance on the Web     | spam and read later. email to philip@
http://www.PhilipStripling.com/ | civex.com is read daily.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> Jerry Kindall <jerrykindall@nospam.invalid> wrote ...
>
>> > On the Mac, HIG is the local custom and therefore it is only
>> > reasonable to expecrt that any foreign application coming to Mac land
>> > can will respect the native customs and accept them as being normal,
>> > while its own foreign customs, although they might be accepted, will
>> > remain foreign.
>> 
>> No, you've got it backwards.  When you launch Emacs, you tell your Mac
>> "I want to travel to Emacs-land" and implicitly accept its foreign
>> customs.
>
> In other words it's a gateway/compatibility application. Fair enough,
> I don't necessarily have a problem with that view, but the issue
> Mr.Scholz raised was purely about my choice of language when I
> referred to Apple style keyboard shortcuts. Therefore, my response was
> only supposed to address his objection to my chosing the word
> "normal". It was not meant to suggest that anyone can conclude from
> this that the Emacs shortcuts are wrong or bad or inacceptable.
>
> The point was that on a Mac, it will have to be permissible to call
> Apple style shortcuts "normal" without being flamed for that choice of
> language.
[...]

To clarify: It wasn't only the use of the word "normal" in the sense
of "what I expect when I launch an application on Mac OS" that
provoked me to write the article you are referring to. In this sense
"C-x/C-c/C-v" are indeed normal on Mac OS.

But I do have to admit that this was not necessarily obvious from my
posting. And I do have to admit that it is a possible interpretation
of the actual words I chose, to read it that way. So it was my fault
that I didn't really explain what I meant in the first place. 

    Oliver
-- 
18 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...
>
>> > On a Mac, cut/copy/paste is Cmd-x/c/v. Emacs doesn't adhere to this,
>> > but in principle, this can be changed back to normal by defining
>> > keyboard macros.
>> 
>> It is like a school-kid saying: "Why don't the people abroad speak
>> German? It would be so much easier for them to talk to each other if they
>> did not insist of using foreign languages at home."
>
> Wrong example. You just shot yourself in the foot. :-)
>
> On the Mac, HIG is the local custom and therefore it is only
> reasonable to expecrt that any foreign application coming to Mac land
> can will respect the native customs and accept them as being normal,
> while its own foreign customs, although they might be accepted, will
> remain foreign.
[...]

I don't use Mac OS, but when I don't work under GNU/Linux, I sometimes
do use MS Windows, where the same weird (IMHO) C-x/C-c/C-v stuff
predominates. Every time I try to copy a region in MS Word, the window
suddenly closes. Every time I try to jump to the beginning of a line,
to my surprise the whole buffer in MS Word is selected. I am glad that
Emacs behaves the same on MS Windows. It makes MS Windows usable for
me and I could live with it happily if only I could change the Window
manager to something more user friendly (to Ion for example). I would
spit fire and swearwords in every Emacs related mailing list, if Emacs
would ever get different defaults on different platforms. Fortunately
that is never going to happen, at least not for GNU Emacs.

Well, yes, there are Emacs users who prefer C-x/C-c/C-v; they use
cua-mode or something similar. I probably would be one of them, if I
had to use MS Windows applications more often (for the very reason
that I'd like to avoid keyboard-schizophreny). Fortunately I am used
to do everything from inside Emacs, and the few non-Emacs applications
that I sometimes use under GNU/Linux fortunately accept Emacs-like
keybindings. So does Emacs have a unixoid keybindings? No, it is the
other way around: most GNU/Linux applications provide Emacs-like
keybindings. But that's not the real point.

The real point is that C-x/C-c/C-v is only the top of the
iceberg. *The whole design of the user interface is different.* The
very idea of how a program should behave, the very concept of buffers
and windows and frames is different from Mac OS, MS Windows, Gnome,
KDE, FVWM, whatever. People implemented Mailreaders, Newsreader,
Browsers, Z-Code interpreters, IRC-clients in Emacs Lisp, because they
want to do those things in an Emacs-like UI. They created interfaces
for various tools (grep, cvs, MH, various shells, whatever), not
because they were too dumb to use a client of its own, but because
they want to use those applications in a way that follows the Emacs
HIG.

I could try to point out some of the benefits of the Emacs UI, but you
are obviously not willing to even consider them, so I leave it at that
and conclude: Emacs is not the right tool for you. The question
whether your installation is broken or whether the particular version
you have installed is flaky is of no real concern. You won't get happy
with Emacs even if you got it running flawlessly, unless you change
your attitude and try to experience the Emacs UI on its own
terms. There is nothing haughty in saying that Emacs is not the right
tool for you. It simply isn't supposed to do, what you expect it to
do. So please stop annoying yourself and the people in gnu.emacs.help.

I seem to recall that there once was a section in the Emacs Manual
(?) saying that Apple once tried to enforce the Mac HIG more strictly
and that GNU Emacs did boykott the Macintosh for this very
reason. Things have changed now, as it seems. Some people are
seemlingly glad that they did change.

And no, I did not shot myself in the foot. My example was meant as a
hint that there is nothing natural in a particular choice between
keybindings. It is entirely arbitrary. As every example has its
limitations, this one has its limitations, too. There is no point in
carrying it out too far. 

[But even if we'd like to stretch the example a bit beyond its
boundaries: I do not expect every foreigner who comes into my country
to adopt my language and my customs (hey, and I thought, *I* am the
German here ...). Especially (but not only), when he or she came on
invitation. In fact it is worse: it was you who fired up Emacs on your
platform, it was you who posted to an Emacs newsgroup. It was you who
entered Emacs land. But as I said: the example has its limitations.]

The moral is: if you want a Macintosh-HIG-editor, use a
Macintosh-HIG-editor. If you want Emacs, use Emacs. Don't complain
about Emacs being Emacs.

    Oliver
-- 
17 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> writes:
[...]
> *The whole design of the user interface is different.*
[...]

To clarify: that does not mean that I don't think, the Emacs UI
wouldn't need considerable improvement[1]. But even after re-reading
the OP: that is not the topic of this thread.

    Oliver

Footnotes: 
[1] Although I hasten to add that I prefer it as it is to any other
UI. And the improvement it needs is improvement in an Emacsish way.
-- 
17 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <m2issoavgw.fsf@owlbear.local>,
Andrew Choi  <akochoi_NOSPAM_@shaw.ca> wrote:
>For the record, let me just say I /intended/ Emacs on the Mac OS to
>behave the way it behaves when I ported it: as close to itself on other
>platforms as possible.  I'm open to suggestions but certainly not ones
>that begin by saying "Is your port crippleware or broken?".

I suggest that you also support standard MacOS behavior whenever it doesn't
conflict with normal Emacs behavior.  So if Command isn't being used as
Meta, you should support the standard shortcuts: Cmd-Q for
save-buffers-kill-emacs, Cmd-X/C/V for kill-region/kill-ring-save/yank,
Cmd-O/S for find-file/save-buffer, etc.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, a Level(3) Company, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Andrew Choi]

Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com> writes:

> I suggest that you also support standard MacOS behavior whenever it doesn't
> conflict with normal Emacs behavior.  So if Command isn't being used as
> Meta, you should support the standard shortcuts: Cmd-Q for
> save-buffers-kill-emacs, Cmd-X/C/V for kill-region/kill-ring-save/yank,
> Cmd-O/S for find-file/save-buffer, etc.

When mac-command-key-is-meta is nil the Mac command key is recognized
by Emacs as the Alt modifier.  So, by putting something like

  (global-set-key [?\A-x] 'kill-region)
  (global-set-key [?\A-c] 'kill-ring-save)
  (global-set-key [?\A-v] 'yank)
  ...

in a startup file, you'll have the behavior you desire.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Ajanta]

Andrew Choi <akochoi_NOSPAM_@shaw.ca> wrote:

> So I'll not respond to his questions.  People asking for help should 
> have basic manners.

OTOH you may wish to also consider that threads like this are read and
followed not just the original poster but also hundreds or even
thousands of individuals, more if we count those who might access it on
Google. Strong language used on the net is not always a personal attack
on anyone, it is just to get attention in a crowded chaotic place. Just
a thought.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

Ajanta <ajanta@no.spam> writes:

> Andrew Choi <akochoi_NOSPAM_@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> So I'll not respond to his questions.  People asking for help should 
>> have basic manners.
>
> OTOH you may wish to also consider that threads like this are read and
> followed not just the original poster but also hundreds or even
> thousands of individuals, more if we count those who might access it on
> Google. 

Oh, come on. The first message in this thread was obviously not a
request for help but the shout of someone giving voice to his
frustration. And it even became worse in his replies. This is rude, to
say the least. And that is the benevolent interpretation. The slightly
less benevolent interpretation is that it was trolling. Regarding
this, he was treated very kindly and very politely so far.

> Strong language used on the net is not always a personal attack on
> anyone, it is just to get attention in a crowded chaotic place. Just
> a thought.

Does that actually work somewhere?

I don't mean "getting attention", obviously, but does it work to get
help somewhere on the net?

    Oliver
-- 
17 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Phil Stripling]

Ajanta <ajanta@no.spam> writes:

> Andrew Choi <akochoi_NOSPAM_@shaw.ca> wrote:
> 
> > So I'll not respond to his questions.  People asking for help should 
> > have basic manners.
> 
> OTOH you may wish to also consider that threads like this are read and
> followed not just the original poster but also hundreds or even
> thousands of individuals, more if we count those who might access it on
> Google. Strong language used on the net is not always a personal attack
> on anyone, it is just to get attention in a crowded chaotic place. Just
> a thought.

I have to agree with Andrew. Personal attacks just to get attention do not
deserve a response.

-- 
Philip Stripling                | email to the replyto address is presumed
Legal Assistance on the Web     | spam and read later. email to philip@
http://www.PhilipStripling.com/ | civex.com is read daily.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Phil Stripling <phil_stripling@cieux.zzn.com> wrote ...

> Personal attacks just to get attention do not
> deserve a response.

There were no personal attacks.

As for not getting response to fix the problems, it is up to you. My
offer still stands. Any help I get to make it work will be included in
the documentation I am going to provide and the Emacs/ILISP/Lisp
commmunity stands to benefit as other people inexperienced in these
tools will find it easier to get past this roadblock.

OTOH, if I don't get any help I won't be able to document it properly
and it will be to the loss of the community.


If it wasn't for the fact that I have promised the authors of ILISP a
step-by-step guide for ILISP newbies using OSX, I wouldn't even care
to ask. I usually find another tool if something doesn't work right
away. This saves a lot of time and hassle. And if I can't find another
tool, I come back a year later and see if things work then. For what I
want to do, Alpaca seems sufficient.

If I needed this to earn money, I would either get the client to
purchase a commercial Lisp development system that includes an IDE or
I'd get them to hire someone to write a plug-in for BBEdit that
roughly does what ILISP does for Emacs. My experience has been that in
any commercial context this is the only approach that ensures delivery
in time and on budget. Remember what Gabriel said, "'Worse is better'
is better". He was right.

Anyway, I am not doing this for money. So, as for the documentation I
promised on how to setup Emacs/ILISP on OSX, it will be on a "best
effort only" basis and what "best effort" means depends to how much
help I will get fixing the problems I described.


rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[David Kastrup]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> Phil Stripling <phil_stripling@cieux.zzn.com> wrote ...
> 
> > Personal attacks just to get attention do not
> > deserve a response.
> 
> There were no personal attacks.
> 
> As for not getting response to fix the problems, it is up to you. My
> offer still stands. Any help I get to make it work will be included in
> the documentation I am going to provide and the Emacs/ILISP/Lisp
> commmunity stands to benefit as other people inexperienced in these
> tools will find it easier to get past this roadblock.
> 
> OTOH, if I don't get any help I won't be able to document it
> properly and it will be to the loss of the community.

Clipboard usage is documented in the Emacs manual in the section
"Clipboard" (surprise, surprise), and there is a section "MacOS",
too.  If your "documentation" is trying to keep people from reading
the provided documentation, it will do more harm than good.

> Anyway, I am not doing this for money. So, as for the documentation
> I promised on how to setup Emacs/ILISP on OSX, it will be on a "best
> effort only" basis and what "best effort" means depends to how much
> help I will get fixing the problems I described.

You might want to read the Emacs manual on the clipboard and MacOS.
While you seem to have more fun just ranting, there might be a source
of inspiration in it WRT to writing a manual about Emacs and MacOS.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote ...

> You might want to read the Emacs manual on the clipboard and MacOS.

If you refer to <M-x> menu-bar-enable-clipboard, yes I tried that,
too, but it didn't change the fact that paste doesn't work.

I have also read the section "Keyboard input on the Mac" but it
doesn't have anything to offer that addresses my problem (most Emacs
shortcuts being deaf).

The section on fonts seems to suggest how to change fonts/sizes, but I
still don't know how to change the default font or its size. Anyway,
fonts are the least of my problems.

Anything else in that manual assumes that the Emacs keyboard shortcuts
work, but for me most of them are deaf, so the manual doesn't really
help.


> While you seem to have more fun just ranting, there might be a source
> of inspiration in it WRT to writing a manual about Emacs and MacOS.

You are not paying attention. I am not writing any manual. I am
writing a mini-how-to that aims to get OSX users who are interested in
Common Lisp *past* Emacs quickly instead of having to spend an entire
week just to get the editor working.

Working means they will be able to launch Emacs and have ILISP load
automatically so they can do M-x openmcl or M-x allegro and get a
listener to their choice of Lisp within Emacs. This, I have already
covered.

However, other than being a bridge between Emacs and an external Lisp
listener, ILISP also provides various convenience features, such as
context sensitive access to the Common Lisp HyperSpec, a web based
documentation that describes the ANSI CL standard. Those features are
activated by Emacs keyboard shorcuts. So, if the shortcuts are deaf
then the added value that ILISP is supposed to bring is greatly
diminished.

And if there are things that Mac users are used to that are not
supposed to work in Emacs, such as choosing "Quit" from the menu in
order to quit, that's fair enough, but I better tell those folks right
away what to expect. Because otherwise, I risk getting swamped with
email asking me why this and that doesn't seem to work.


rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Gilbert Harman]

I couldn't tell whether you are interested in using emacs with MCL, but if
so, it is relevant that MCL already includes an emacs type editor, so you
could just use that.  It runs fine in OS X.  So does the current build of
emacs, but you would need considerable expertise to install it correctly and
you do not seem to require the additional resources full emacs provides.

 Gil

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Gilbert Harman]

I couldn't tell whether you are interested in using emacs with MCL, but if
so, it is relevant that MCL already includes an emacs type editor, so you
could just use that.  It runs fine in OS X.  So does the current build of
emacs, but you would need considerable expertise to install it correctly and
you do not seem to require the additional resources full emacs provides.

 Gil

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Ajanta <ajanta@no.spam> wrote in message news:<060520031302215334%ajanta@no.spam>...
> Andrew Choi <akochoi_NOSPAM_@shaw.ca> wrote:
> 
> > So I'll not respond to his questions.  People asking for help should 
> > have basic manners.
> 
> OTOH you may wish to also consider that threads like this are read and
> followed not just the original poster but also hundreds or even
> thousands of individuals, more if we count those who might access it on
> Google. Strong language used on the net is not always a personal attack
> on anyone, it is just to get attention in a crowded chaotic place. Just
> a thought.

Thank you for making that point.

I had already explained my definition of crippleware and you will find
that it is in no way offending. Apart from the need to get attention
there is also the need to make the subject line short.

So instead of

"Emacs: Does the Aqua port have the following features left out
because the developer didn't have time to do it yet or are there any
fixes for the problems I have experienced?"

(I have done this sort of thing in an earlier life and almost never
got any replies to it)

one writes

"Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?"

This fulfills both requirements, getting attention and being short.

Besides, I posted this in gnu.emacs.help and not gnu.emacs.advocacy.

Anybody who reads the actual post can see that there is no flaming no
bashing, but a description of problems along with a question whether
or not the problem described is intentional ("feature") or broken
("bug").

This is important to know because if it is intentional then it would
be a complete waste of time trying to find a fix.

There is far too many posts on usenet where somebody reports a
problem, is told that the software in question hasn't implemented such
a feature, at least not yet, and then it goes on and on and on mocking
about it. If it's not there then it's not there and consequently there
is then no point trying to get "the bug fixed".

I am sorry if anyone who has been working on any of the various Emacs
Mac ports feels offended by my pragmatism. I certainly didn't mean to
cause offense. If someone tells me: "Quitting is not yet implemented,
for now you have to use force quit or kill -9", then I call that a
feature, albeit an inconvenient feature, but you won't find me going
on about it. I will accept that it's not there and that is it, I'll
proceed to the next problem. Likewise, if you tell me "Weird, this
should work, it works for me", then I call that a bug, which is a lot
better than if it's a feature because many bugs have known fixes.
Again, you won't find me going on about it like "Look how bugridden
this software is", no, all I want is to find out is how to fix the
bug.

In respect of the term "crippleware", again this is born out of
pragmatism. You won't find me going on about it like "Look how
crippled this software is", no, it means there are missing features
which are present in other versions of the same software. Very often
this is done for marketing reasons "cheaper or freeware version is
crippled - full version costs more". However, it also applies to work
in progress software if that work in progress is not explicitly
denoted as "beta software", which is another way to describe missing
features that haven't been included yet. However, if the developer
doesn't call it "beta software" it would create more confusion then
anything else if I was to call it "betaware", so I choose the
alternative "crippleware".

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[David Kastrup]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> I had already explained my definition of crippleware and you will
> find that it is in no way offending.

Is "bk_usenet" an idiot or is he just trolling?

Note that "idiot" derives from the Greek ἴδιος and means "speaking
for himself" and that is my definition and you will find that it is
in no way offending.  Idiot.

> Apart from the need to get attention there is also the need to make
> the subject line short.

Well, "FUCK YOU!!!!!" would be even shorter.

> So instead of
> 
> "Emacs: Does the Aqua port have the following features left out
> because the developer didn't have time to do it yet or are there any
> fixes for the problems I have experienced?"
> 
> one writes
> 
> "Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?"

If one is an idiot.  The problem is that you leave no third option,
like "I have overlooked something in its configuration and have not
read the documentation".  So you are just an idiot when making such
posts since others might not have the problem.

> This fulfills both requirements, getting attention and being short.

It may fail in getting compassion if you are just interested in being
an idiot.

> Besides, I posted this in gnu.emacs.help and not gnu.emacs.advocacy.

So much the worse for it.  The advocacy groups are the groups where
only flame wars reside.  Nobody would have particularly noticed you
there.

> Anybody who reads the actual post can see that there is no flaming
> no bashing, but a description of problems along with a question
> whether or not the problem described is intentional ("feature") or
> broken ("bug").

Or due to an idiot not reading the available documentation.  The
Emacs manual has an index entry "clipboard support (Mac OS)".  It
also has an index entry for clipboard support under X.

> This is important to know because if it is intentional then it would
> be a complete waste of time trying to find a fix.

> There is far too many posts on usenet where somebody reports a
> problem, is told that the software in question hasn't implemented
> such a feature, at least not yet, and then it goes on and on and on
> mocking about it. If it's not there then it's not there and
> consequently there is then no point trying to get "the bug fixed".

If you spent half the time reading the manual that you waste on
embarrassing yourself in public, you would look like less of an idiot.

> I am sorry if anyone who has been working on any of the various
> Emacs Mac ports feels offended by my pragmatism.

It is pragmatism not to read the documentation?

> In respect of the term "crippleware", again this is born out of
> pragmatism.

τὸ πρᾶγμα from whence "pragmatism" derives is the deed.  It would be
pragmatic to look into the manual instead of foaming at your mouth.

> You won't find me going on about it like "Look how crippled this
> software is", no, it means there are missing features which are
> present in other versions of the same software.

What other version of Emacs is there?

> Very often this is done for marketing reasons "cheaper or freeware
> version is crippled - full version costs more".

You have no clue just how offensive you are, right?

> However, it also applies to work in progress software if that work
> in progress is not explicitly denoted as "beta software", which is
> another way to describe missing features that haven't been included
> yet. However, if the developer doesn't call it "beta software" it
> would create more confusion then anything else if I was to call it
> "betaware", so I choose the alternative "crippleware".

And I choose to call you an idiot, and can cite the Greek dictionary
definition to support that, as opposed to you who have no authority to
back you up on your vocabulary abuse.  You just speak for yourself,
and your words are idiosyncratic: nobody else uses them in that
manner.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Ajanta]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:
> 
> > I had already explained my definition of crippleware and you will
> > find that it is in no way offending.
> 
> Is "bk_usenet" an idiot or is he just trolling?
> 
> Note that "idiot" derives from the Greek ἴδιος and means "speaking
> for himself" and that is my definition and you will find that it is
> in no way offending.  Idiot.
> 
> > Apart from the need to get attention there is also the need to make
> > the subject line short.
> 
> Well, "FUCK YOU!!!!!" would be even shorter.

This portion of David Kastrup's post is Hall of Fame quality, one of
the funniest replies I have ever seen on the Usenet...

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Alan Mackenzie]

BK <bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote on 7 May 2003 04:35:12 -0700:
> Ajanta <ajanta@no.spam> wrote in message
> news:<060520031302215334%ajanta@no.spam>...

> I had already explained my definition of crippleware and you will find
> that it is in no way offending. Apart from the need to get attention
> there is also the need to make the subject line short.

> So instead of

> "Emacs: Does the Aqua port have the following features left out
> because the developer didn't have time to do it yet or are there any
> fixes for the problems I have experienced?"

> (I have done this sort of thing in an earlier life and almost never
> got any replies to it)

> one writes

> "Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?"

> This fulfills both requirements, getting attention and being short.

Er, BK, it may well do this, but it fails a third critical requirement,
that of politeness.  The terms "crippleware" and "broken" both have
well-defined meanings in hacker circles, and they are derogatory.  As
somebody who's actively writing documentation, you knew this.  Surely,
you *must* have known this.

Now, such a subject line coming from a frustrated newbie who's
practically tearing his hair out, I think is understandable and
forgiveable (though not everybody on this group would agree with me
here).  Coming from an experienced insider is something different.

There seems a strong possibility that you were posting deliberately to
annoy people.  But let me give you the benefit of the doubt and assume
you offended people accidentally.

Look up the definitions of "crippleware" and "broken" in the jargon file
[anybody got a URL for it?] (or the printed version, "The New Hacker's
Dictionary" by Eric Raymond), then look at your subject line again, and
understand where the offence came from.

Then consider how you could have posted less offensively.  For example,
the subject line something like "Questions on Emacs key bindings on the
Aqua version" would have been entirely inoffensive.

> Anybody who reads the actual post can see that there is no flaming no
> bashing, but a description of problems along with a question whether
> or not the problem described is intentional ("feature") or broken
> ("bug").

Well, it seemed to me to be somewhat arrogant, laying down the rules of
how the program ought to work.  But that's just my take.

> This is important to know because if it is intentional then it would
> be a complete waste of time trying to find a fix.

And I perceive this latest paragraph to be a continuation of the
arrogance.  It sounds to me very like you are presuming to judge whether
the implementor of the software is ignorant or stupid.

> There is far too many posts on usenet where somebody reports a
> problem, is told that the software in question hasn't implemented such
> a feature, at least not yet, and then it goes on and on and on mocking
> about it. If it's not there then it's not there and consequently there
> is then no point trying to get "the bug fixed".

Now, here you have failed to take into account the possibility that you
had misunderstood the issues, and that there simply is no bug, therefore
nothing to fix.

> I am sorry if anyone who has been working on any of the various Emacs
> Mac ports feels offended by my pragmatism. I certainly didn't mean to
> cause offense.

Now, although this looks like an apology, it isn't really an apology at
all.  What it says, in effect, is "sorry you're all so stupid to be
offended by my perfectly OK post".  I would respectfully suggest you
rephrase it somewhat as follows:  "I am sorry I offended people by my
rather forthright post.  I certainly didn't mean to cause offence".

> If someone tells me: "Quitting is not yet implemented, for now you have
> to use force quit or kill -9", then I call that a feature, albeit an
> inconvenient feature, but you won't find me going on about it. I will
> accept that it's not there and that is it, I'll proceed to the next
> problem. Likewise, if you tell me "Weird, this should work, it works
> for me", then I call that a bug, which is a lot better than if it's a
> feature because many bugs have known fixes.  Again, you won't find me
> going on about it like "Look how bugridden this software is", no, all I
> want is to find out is how to fix the bug.

You might do well to consider that there might not have been a
bug/feature at all, and the problem was your own misunderstanding.

> In respect of the term "crippleware", again this is born out of
> pragmatism. You won't find me going on about it like "Look how
> crippled this software is", no, ....

Wrong.  That is precisely what you were going on about.

> .... it means there are missing features which are present in other
> versions of the same software. Very often this is done for marketing
> reasons "cheaper or freeware version is crippled - full version costs
> more".

This suggestion, made in the context of Emacs, is possibly more offensive
than anything else you've said up to now.  The entire GNU system was born
of idealism and is sustained by idealism largely as a reaction against
what you describe.  I suggest you start at <http://www.gnu.org/> and
learn what is really driving projects like Emacs.  And please don't tell
me you were really talking about commercial software here.

> However, it also applies to work in progress software if that work in
> progress is not explicitly denoted as "beta software", which is another
> way to describe missing features that haven't been included yet.
> However, if the developer doesn't call it "beta software" it would
> create more confusion then anything else if I was to call it
> "betaware", so I choose the alternative "crippleware".

Can you really be so naive as this?  You'd do better if you realised that
the software you're talking about is functional software of the highest
grade, not "beta software", not "crippleware", and that the people who've
implemented and maintained it are deserving of the highest respect.  If
there's something in Emacs you don't like, then change it to what you
want, if you're capable enough.

> rgds
> bk

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Alan Mackenzie<none@example.invalid> wrote ...

> As somebody who's actively writing documentation, you knew this.

You are not paying attention. I am not writing any documentation.
Instead, I am trying to serve the custom that one has to write a final
follow-up after getting help with a problem. I got help from the
Lispers on how to get ILISP working with my Aqua Emacs and one of the
authors of ILISP suggested that I should provide a how-to for OSX
users that could be included in the ILISP user guide.

I am not in the business of writing documentation, I am just returning
a favour.


> Now, such a subject line coming from a frustrated newbie who's
> practically tearing his hair out,

Et voila, that's me.

> I think is understandable and forgiveable (though not everybody on this
> group would agree with me here). Coming from an experienced insider is something different.

Experienced insider? on what?

I have never used Emacs before in my life and my Lisp skills date back
ages when we learned a bit of VAX-Lisp (without Emacs) at university,
not to write software, but to do mathematics. Back then there was no
such thing as Mathematica, so people used APL or Lisp depending on the
math professor's preferences.

I was so impressed by the language that I said "if I ever get to do
programming, that's the tool I want to use". Once in a while I played
with various open source lisps and a few years ago I bought MCL, which
unfortunately only works under OS9. But I never really got to do
anything serious. Now I want to pick up on this again and take it a
little further this time.

I did quite a lot of glueing Mac applications together with
AppleScript though, but I have never run into anybody who would have
got offended when I said that AppleScript is crippled compared to most
other programming environments, because its true and most
AppleScripters know it - perhaps with AppleScript Studio the gap isn't
that big anymore. Anyway, we like AppleScript nevertheless.

If that makes me an experienced insider, I'll be very surprised.


> There seems a strong possibility that you were posting deliberately to
> annoy people.

To the contrary, to me it begins suspiciously to look more and more as
if I might have actually done many people a service because almost
nobody seems interested in why almost all of the Emacs keyboard
shortcuts are deaf. Instead they seem to take pleasure in nitpicking
and flaming, almost as if they had just been waiting for someone who
is easy prey.


> > Anybody who reads the actual post can see that there is no flaming no
> > bashing, but a description of problems along with a question whether
> > or not the problem described is intentional ("feature") or broken
> > ("bug").
> 
> Well, it seemed to me to be somewhat arrogant, laying down the rules of
> how the program ought to work.  But that's just my take.

Which would be wrong. How am I supposed to know how the program ought
to work. I have a book that lists a bazillion Emacs keyboard
shortcuts. The most important ones all start with C-x, which is deaf
on my Emacs and so are others which to me would seem to be essential
for an editor.

Amongst them copy/cut and paste. So, if Emacs' copy paste doesn't work
and it is a Mac port, then I figure it may well be that it uses the
Apple style cut/copy paste, so I try that. But no luck there either.
So, perhaps, drag and drop works instead which would be an acceptable
substitute. But no luck there again. But that means there is *no
pasting* at all. That is something I can hardly believe, so at least
one of the possible methods should work and if it doesn't then it must
be broken.

In order to fix the one that's broken, I must first know which one is
supposed to work and which one is not, because that which isn't
supposed to be there in the first place cannot work and I shall not
think of it's absence as a bug then. So, I ask.

And what do I get? Holy cow. An army of self knighted defenders of the
holy Emacs order have just been waiting for someone like me who didn't
know how to pray the holy Emacs gospel and they all come at once to
slice the infidel into pieces.

Thank god I didn't sign up for any memberships. I'd be in serious
trouble.


> > This is important to know because if it is intentional then it would
> > be a complete waste of time trying to find a fix.
> 
> And I perceive this latest paragraph to be a continuation of the
> arrogance.  It sounds to me very like you are presuming to judge whether
> the implementor of the software is ignorant or stupid.

I am utterly puzzled how you managed to read all that into what I
said. Mindboggling.

If a feature isn't supposed to be there, that is to say if the
implementor decided that the feature is not supported, then it
wouldn't be a bug. If it isn't a bug there is no point asking how to
"fix" it. Because a bug that isn't there cannot be fixed. Consequently
it would be a waste of time to try to find that "fix" because there is
none.

Sure, I could make a suggestion for the feature to be supported in
some future version, but I figure that if a rather obvious thing isn't
supported then the implementor must have had his reason when he
decided not to support it. Then again, for the purpose I need to know,
it is sufficient to know that it was meant not to be there.

For example, I can write down something like

"Don't get confused by the fact that "Quit" doesn't quit. It is meant
to be that way. Instead do C-x C-c to quit Emacs."

That would be fine if only C-x worked. You know what's going to happed
if I write the above and C-x doesn't work, do you?! I'll risk getting
swamped with email ...

"Hi, I read your step by step guide and managed to get Emacs and ILISP
working but I can't seem to quit the program. You said I shouldn't be
confused by the fact that 'Quit' doesn't quit, that it was meant to be
that way and use C-x C-c instead to quit, but C-x C-c doesn't quit the
program either. What's going on here?"

So, shall I write something like this

"Don't get confused by the fact that "Quit" doesn't quit. It is meant
to be that way. Instead Emacs is meant to quit by doing C-x C-c, but
that may not work either so use force quit or kill -9 to kill Emacs."

If this thread continues the way it does now, I may actually have to
resort doing this, but if it can be avoided, I think it will be to
everybody's benefit if I can throw in whatever makes C-x C-c work for
anybody who runs into the same problem. That would be so much nicer,
don't you think so?

And look at it from the bright side ... If ever some stupid Mac user
like me comes along and asks why he can't quit Emacs, you don't have
to deal with him, you can simply point him at the URL with the ILISP
user guide and tell him to read the dummy section for dumb Mac users.

But then again, perhaps, you don't want that. Perhaps you enjoy making
us Mac folks look stupid.


> > There is far too many posts on usenet where somebody reports a
> > problem, is told that the software in question hasn't implemented such
> > a feature, at least not yet, and then it goes on and on and on mocking
> > about it. If it's not there then it's not there and consequently there
> > is then no point trying to get "the bug fixed".
> 
> Now, here you have failed to take into account the possibility that you
> had misunderstood the issues, and that there simply is no bug, therefore
> nothing to fix.

Which was precisely my point. Hint: look at the quotation marks around
the last three words to indicate that the bug was only perceived, that
is was really a feature (feature in this context means the missing
bit, whatever it was, was *intended* *not* to be there and therefore
it cannot be "fixed").


> > If someone tells me: "Quitting is not yet implemented, for now you have
> > to use force quit or kill -9", then I call that a feature, albeit an
> > inconvenient feature, but you won't find me going on about it. I will
> > accept that it's not there and that is it, I'll proceed to the next
> > problem. Likewise, if you tell me "Weird, this should work, it works
> > for me", then I call that a bug, which is a lot better than if it's a
> > feature because many bugs have known fixes.  Again, you won't find me
> > going on about it like "Look how bugridden this software is", no, all I
> > want is to find out is how to fix the bug.
> 
> You might do well to consider that there might not have been a
> bug/feature at all, and the problem was your own misunderstanding.

Sure, let's try to find out. The Emacs manual at www.gnu.org/manual
and the O'Reilly book "Unix in a Nutshell" both say that C-x C-c is
used to exit Emacs.

I understand this to mean that if I want Emacs to quit, then I press
Ctrl-x followed by Ctrl-c and Emacs should then quit.

But you may well be right and that was a misunderstanding, because if
I press Ctrl-x followed by Ctrl-c Emacs does in fact *not* quit.

Perhaps, you can enlighten me with your understanding of what the
meaning of "C-x C-c is used to exit Emacs" is. Better still, if C-x
C-c isn't supposed to quit Emacs don't tell me what it does, just tell
me how I am supposed to quit Emacs instead. And when you do so,
remember that the Apple style methods to quit an application don't
work, which may be intentional, but intentional or not, they won't
count as alternatives to quit Emacs.

And just in case you are going to tell me that kill -9 is the proper
method, I would be eager to know why this isn't mentioned neither in
the Emacs manual nor in the O'Reilly book.

But perhaps this is just a misunderstaning, perhaps C-x C-c is just a
shorthand for kill -9. *That* would be an acceptable explanation.

 
> > .... it means there are missing features which are present in other
> > versions of the same software. Very often this is done for marketing
> > reasons "cheaper or freeware version is crippled - full version costs
> > more".
> 
> This suggestion, made in the context of Emacs,

How conveniently cut to quote out of context and ignoring the "Very
often" bit. Do you do this kind of thing on purpose or does it come
naturally?


> Can you really be so naive as this?  You'd do better if you realised that
> the software you're talking about is functional software of the highest
> grade, not "beta software", not "crippleware",

Fine. The only trouble I have with that statement is that it cannot be
reconciled with the fact that most of the keyboard shortcuts listed in
the Emacs manual and in my O'Reilly book simply do not work.

Tell me, how is it that everybody is so extremely careful to ignore
the fact that most of the Emacs shortcuts are deaf?

Is there anything going on here I should know about?

Am I not supposed to say "most of the Emacs shortcuts don't work"?

Is that some kind of sacrilege or what is it?

You know in the UK it is almost customary to make a certain kind of
joking comment to somebody who is going to visit Germany or otherwise
going to have a get together of some kind with Germans. The comment is
"Don't mention the war!" Is there anything like that going on here and
I am the fool who went into the trap or what?


> If there's something in Emacs you don't like, then change it to what you
> want, if you're capable enough.

Well, if I was able to do that, I wouldn't have to ask here, or would
I?

I have absolutely no clue how to make Emacs behave the way the *Emacs
manual* says it should behave and I would appreciate if somebody here
could tell me how.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Ajanta]

BK <bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> "Hi, I read your step by step guide and managed to get Emacs and ILISP
> working but I can't seem to quit the program. You said I shouldn't be
> confused by the fact that 'Quit' doesn't quit, that it was meant to be
> that way and use C-x C-c instead to quit, but C-x C-c doesn't quit the
> program either. What's going on here?"
> 
> So, shall I write something like this
> 
> "Don't get confused by the fact that "Quit" doesn't quit. It is meant
> to be that way. Instead Emacs is meant to quit by doing C-x C-c, but
> that may not work either so use force quit or kill -9 to kill Emacs."

I have "enhanced carbon emacs" here (v 21.3.50) from
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/mac-emacs/ .

You can quit with C-x C-c. 

You can quit by closing the window, by clicking in the top left corner
button. 

If the Emacs icon is in the dock, then right-click, or C-click, and 
just click-and-hold, all 3 result in a menu from which you can quit. 

Only Cmd-q is disabled, but there are plenty of ways to quit.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Ajanta <ajanta@no.spam> wrote ...

> I have "enhanced carbon emacs" here (v 21.3.50) from
> http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/mac-emacs/

I have heard a lot of good things about this build and I would love to
use it, but it requires 10.2 and right now I am stuck with 10.1.5
(can't easily upgrade because it's OSX Server => $$$) plus I would
like to provide information for both 10.1 and 10.2 users (the former
appearing to be the more challenging part).

But thanks anyway, this build appears to be very encouraging.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Ajanta]

BK <bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I have heard a lot of good things about this build and I would love to
> use it, but it requires 10.2 and right now I am stuck with 10.1.5

They have versions for both 10.1 and 10.2:

For OSX 10.1, Emacs 21.1:
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/mac-emacs/index-1.4.html

For OSX 10.2, Emacs 21.3.50:
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~franconi/mac-emacs/

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...

> I would
> spit fire and swearwords in every Emacs related mailing list, if Emacs
> would ever get different defaults on different platforms.

So, then what about an Emacs that cannot be quit by no matter what
means no matter what flavours (other than using kill -9) ?

Is that a reason to ask if it is a bug or a feature without getting
flamed?

You are riding on this cut and paste thing like you didn't read my
post. You ignore the fact that no pasting works no matter whether I
try the Mac method or the Emacs method. I can't quite seem to fathom
why you choose to ignore this vital fact which is the centre of the
problem that led me to post here and ask. If I was nasty I would
either assume you chose to ignore this because you are only interested
in flaming and taking the "Emacs flavoured pasting doesn't work
either" part would spoil your fun, or because your attention span
while reading is severely handicapped. So, far I have given you the
benefit of the doubt and I am sure other people who read this thread
have, too. But the more you keep walking on such thin ice the less
likely you will receive the benefit of doubt any further.

I don't give a damn about whether or not Emacs should allow HIG
conformant pasting, because this is the least of my problems, which
you would know if you had read my post. The problem which I have is
that very important functionality is totally unreachable regardless of
what method I use. It's not working the Emacs way *and* it is not
working the Mac way, nor is it working any other way.

What I am interested to know is whether this behavior is due to a bug
that can be fixed  and if so how do I fix it, or whether this behavior
is because the current port hasn't yet implemented the functionality,
in which case I would obviously waste my time trying to find a fix.

This was the nature of the questions I asked. Now you should ask
yourself whether of all that which you have responded there was
anything that could actually contribute to finding a fix to the
problems which are at issue here.

If you find that none of which you have responded does contribute in
this manner, then you should ask yourself whether you are actually
interested in contributing to find a fix or whether you are only
interested in nitpicking and flaming and if it is the latter, then
please do tell us, because everybody who is interested in how to fix
the problems at issue will safely be able to ignore your posts.

Do keep in mind that this thread is being archived by Google and
anybody who will have a similar problem with a carbonised version of
Emacs and tries to find a solution will be making use of the archive.
They will be very pleased to find this thread with a detailed
description of a problem that will more or less match their problem
and consequently they will expect to find answers in this thread.
However, they will be very disappointed if it turns out that apart
from a problem description there is nothing but flaming in the
remainder of the thread.


> [But even if we'd like to stretch the example a bit beyond its
> boundaries: I do not expect every foreigner who comes into my country
> to adopt my language and my customs (hey, and I thought, *I* am the
> German here ...).

Well, I have been working for extended periods of time in foreign
countries and unless I know I will leave with in a short time, I
always expect myself and other foreigners I work with who are also
there for extended periods of time to pick up local customs and the
local language.

So, yes, indeed, if I was to work in Germany and it was not just a
short business trip, I will have to brush up my high-school German,
which is pretty bad these days and I have to kick myself in the butt
and relearn a language that I feel pretty uncomfortable with because
it is a rather difficult language.

In fact, I used to work in Switzerland and although the Swiss didn't
expect me to speak and understand German, they were always very
pleased to find out that I  had managed to tune my ears into their
local dialect ("Switzertuetsch") because they could just talk as they
used to and feel more relaxed. The burden was thereby on me and not on
them to worry about whether or not I had caught everything and ask if
in doubt.

When I was working in South America I picked up Spanish and I got a
language guide for South America to make sure I wouldn't use words
which are only used in Spain but not in Latin America. People may not
expect that kind of thing but they are very thankful if you do it
anyway because it shows respect for their customs. Once you have
established this acknowledgement, then you can talk about your own
customs and they will be all the more interested and tolerant.

Of course this can have it's drawbacks as I learned on a short trip to
Spain when I found myself unable to order a steak in Spanish because
the word "lomo" I had got used to is a Latin-Americanism not always
understood in Spain. I had to ask for the word first.


> The moral is: if you want a Macintosh-HIG-editor, use a
> Macintosh-HIG-editor. If you want Emacs, use Emacs. Don't complain
> about Emacs being Emacs.

Are you suggesting that if I want to use Emacs and it doesn't work
neither the way Emacs works nor the way Mac works I am supposed to
toss it away and not ask other users if they know of any fixes?

Mind you, I didn't post to gnu.emacs.advocacy, but to gnu.emacs.help

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "BK" == BK  <bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk> writes:

  BK> Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...

  BK> I don't give a damn about whether or not Emacs should allow HIG
  BK> conformant pasting, because this is the least of my problems,
  BK> which you would know if you had read my post. The problem which
  BK> I have is that very important functionality is totally
  BK> unreachable regardless of what method I use. It's not working
  BK> the Emacs way *and* it is not working the Mac way, nor is it
  BK> working any other way.

I think that others have already mentioned that they use emacs on
macs, and that it works fine, including the functionality that you ask
for. 

You did complain that emacs does not fulfil the standard HIG
interface requirements. It doesn't because its not supposed to,
although, of course, it would be very nice to make it behave this way
as an option. 

  BK> If you find that none of which you have responded does
  BK> contribute in this manner, then you should ask yourself whether
  BK> you are actually interested in contributing to find a fix 

The problem has been the manner of your questioning, which has been
fairly aggressive. People would probably have been more helpful if
instead of saying "Emacs is crippleware, what a lot of crap", you had
instead asked "I can not get emacs to work, can you help me?"

Phil

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[John Paul Wallington]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) wrote:

> So, then what about an Emacs that cannot be quit by no matter what
> means no matter what flavours (other than using kill -9) ?

Does C-x C-c quit your Emacs ?

> Is that a reason to ask if it is a bug or a feature without getting
> flamed?

I find it hard to follow what you are talking about.  Could you state
which versions of Emacs you have tried, particularly in terms of their
version numbers and where you got them from ?

The instructions at http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/ explain how
to obtain and build the official development sources.  I have
followed those instructions in the past and ended up with an
excellent Emacs for Mac OS X.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

John Paul Wallington <jpw@gnu.org> wrote ...
 
> Does C-x C-c quit your Emacs ?

No it doesn't. Thank you for asking this.


> I find it hard to follow what you are talking about.  Could you state
> which versions of Emacs you have tried, particularly in terms of their
> version numbers and where you got them from ?

I have tried quite a few and the one I am using now is the least
problematic one. It's 21.1.30 and I downloaded it from

http://www.porkrind.org/emacs/offsite-mirror1/Emacs-21.1.tar.gz

There are two newer versions on the same site, but they are noted as
"Beta" and also they won't run under OSX 10.1 (or so it says on the
site).


> The instructions at http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/ explain how
> to obtain and build the official development sources.  I have
> followed those instructions in the past and ended up with an
> excellent Emacs for Mac OS X.

Fair enough. I haven't actually tried to build it myself. Not because
I am lazy, but because most Mac users will shy away from building,
they'll rather download one that is already built. I promised the
authors of ILISP (an Emacs-external Lisp bridge) to write up a
mini-how-to for OSX users to return a favour. Also, the machine I am
working on right now is running OSX Server 10.1.5 and there is no way
I can upgrade that just for Emacs. (OSX server  10.2 costs $999)

If the consensus turns out to be "Emacs builds available for OSX 10.1
are all in a state that has these problems as described" and there are
no fixes, then I will just put a CAUTION into the mini-how-to saying
that on OSX 10.1 there is really no alternative to building from
scratch.

However, if there is a chance that this can be fixed, I'd like to put
in the fixes into the document, so that OSX 10.1 users can apply them
if they have these problems with the pre-built version.

Again, thank you so much for taking the problems I described serious.

rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Kai Großjohann]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> Fair enough. I haven't actually tried to build it myself. Not because
> I am lazy, but because most Mac users will shy away from building,
> they'll rather download one that is already built.

Given all the problems that you have had with all the other versions,
you could do them poor suckers a favor by building Emacs yourself and
then putting it up on an ftp server somewhere.

Then your documentation could state "take that build over there, it
works".

I imagine people might like that.
-- 
This line is not blank.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK)
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.sys.mac.apps
> Date: 7 May 2003 04:01:15 -0700
> 
> What I am interested to know is whether this behavior is due to a bug
> that can be fixed  and if so how do I fix it, or whether this behavior
> is because the current port hasn't yet implemented the functionality,
> in which case I would obviously waste my time trying to find a fix.
> 
> This was the nature of the questions I asked.

If the technical problems you saw and the most efficient way of fixing
them is all you are looking for, why do you insist on reigniting the
flames on every turn of this thread?  To me, it sounds like you are
interested in the flamewar no less than your opponents.

Several people replied to you saying that what doesn't work for you
does indeed work for them on similar systems.  How about if you reply
to them and try to figure out, with their help, what is different in
your setup that makes those features fail for you?  For example, what
happens if you invoke Emacs bypassing the ~/.emacs init file and any
site-wide startup files, if any? do the features that fail now start
working then?

As for the flamewars, if you are not interested in them, simply ignore
that part of the thread which leads there.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...
>
>> I would
>> spit fire and swearwords in every Emacs related mailing list, if Emacs
>> would ever get different defaults on different platforms.
>
> So, then what about an Emacs that cannot be quit by no matter what
> means no matter what flavours (other than using kill -9) ?
>
> Is that a reason to ask if it is a bug or a feature without getting
> flamed?

If an application doesn't provide a means to quit it other than with
kill -9, than that's a bug, no matter what. If an application does
not work as it is documented, then that's a bug, no matter what.

As I said, since obviously people are using Emacs on Mac OS, I guess:
either you have a version of Emacs on your plate that is somehow
b0rked for whatever reason. Or something went wrong with your
installation or configuration. The people using Emacs on the Mac OS
could possibly tell you, if they are still willing to do so.

You freely mixed serious problems with "HIG violations" as if they
were all equally grave and you were obnoxious enough to ask each time
"Bug or feature?" When Benjamin Riefenstahl told you which features
are working for him and supposed to work on the Mac OS and which ones
are not, which UI issues can be adressed etc. you had the guts to a)
tell him that you "give a damn about that excuse for an editor.", b)
ask him whether he thinks that you are a liar, when he told you that
the standard keyboard shortcuts do work (I thought that is what you
wanted to know?), c) started to promote another editor (in
gnu.emacs.help!).

As I said, this all makes sense only when I take it as the shout of
someone giving voice to his frustration. But gnu.emacs.help being a
technical newsgroup this is off topic here. The proper place for this
is alt.religion.emacs.

Look, let me provide a faked example post that would probably have
been well received.

----
Subject: Emacs on Mac OS not working properly

I tried to use Emacs on Mac OS X, but I have encountered several
problems which make it unusable for me. Not even some important
standard keybindings are working. For example C-y, so I can't even
paste text into an Emacs buffer. So I wonder whether Emacs has
actually been fully ported to the Mac OS. Are people using it on Mac
OS?

I am using Mac OS <exact version description> with GNU Emacs <exakt
version/port/toolkit>.

Besides the documented keyboard shortcuts not working there are
several issues that would expect working different.

* If drag a file icon on Emacs' application icon, I would expect
  Emacs to open this file. Unfortunately this doesn't work. Is it
  possible to change this?

* I would like to drag text snippets with the mouse from Emacs to
  other applications and vice versa. I am used to this, as it is
  possible with most Mac OS applications. Is this possible with Emacs?

* I can't cut or copy a text snippet in Emacs to the clipboard.

* I can not quit Emacs by selecting "Quit" in the applications main
  menu or the dock item. This seems like a serious bug to me. Is this
  supposed to work, so is there simply something wrong with Emacs on
  my system? As it seems I have to "force quit" Emacs, which is not
  exactly the way I would expect to close an application.

* Even if the standard Emacs shortcuts were working, I'd prefer to use
  C-x/C-c/C-v for cut/copy/pasted, as I am used to it. I could change
  the keybindings, but this seems rather inconvenient, especially
  since this would conflict with a lot of other keybindings in
  Emacs. Is there a better way to deal with this?

* How do I change the size of the font?

----

I probably made it a bit more polite than would have been absolutely
necessary (my impression is that you get more and better help, if you
are polite; but you still have a chance if you are not quite so
polite, as long as you don't behave really rude). The most important
change is that I turned it into a *practical* question: How do I make
Emacs work the way I expect it to work? Is it possible? What you
posted was a list of HIG violations (with two real issues mixed under)
and you concluded every lawsuit of HIG violations with the obnoxious
question "Bug or feature?" -- "non compos mentis or crime?" -- "Is
Emacs on Mac OS non compos mentis or is it just a wicked criminal?"

> You are riding on this cut and paste thing like you didn't read my
> post. You ignore the fact that no pasting works no matter whether I
> try the Mac method or the Emacs method. I can't quite seem to fathom
> why you choose to ignore this vital fact which is the centre of the
> problem that led me to post here and ask. If I was nasty I would
> either assume you chose to ignore this because you are only interested
> in flaming and taking the "Emacs flavoured pasting doesn't work
> either" part would spoil your fun, or because your attention span
> while reading is severely handicapped. 

No need to insult me. However, you made up seven lawsuits. I count two
of them as severe. But undistinguished from the important stuff there
was the keybinding stuff labelled as "HIG violation" right below the
quitting problem, equally labeled as "HIG violation".

Now I picked the keybinding stuff and only the keybinding stuff. When
you start a thread Usenet, it doesn't belong to you, you know. The
keybinding tune is heard once in a while in gnu.emacs.help and
everytime it is played to the same chords. It was this issue and only
this issue which I adressed.

To be honest: even if I would have been able to help you and even if
I had any desire left to help you after your OP, I lost it after I
read your response to Benjamin Riefenstahl. You would have had to
convince me again, that it is in any sense rewarding to help you.

BTW: At least two persons (three if I include my humble self) have
already pointed out that they regard your post as insulting, rude or
at least impolite. One of them is the maintainer of the Mac OS port,
i. e. the person that is probably the most able one to help
you. Doesn't this raise any doubt that--to say the least--your wording
was not well chosen and that there was--to say the least--a
misunderstanding?

Well, yes, I picked "the cut and paste thing". And what did you? Did
you tell me that it is not such an important thing in your first
reply? That you wouldn't care so much about it, if kill&yank worked at
all? No, you confirmed the importance of C-x/C-c/C-v.

It was that to which I responded. Not to your OP. And I took it as an
opportunity to point out that the "weirdness" of Emacs' UI goes deeper
than keybindings. If keybindings and "No Drag and Drop - text
snippets" are worth to be mentioned in a line with 'can not quit' and
'important documented functionality does not work at all', then you
will not like Emacs, no matter what.

> So, far I have given you the benefit of the doubt and I am sure
> other people who read this thread have, too. But the more you keep
> walking on such thin ice the less likely you will receive the
> benefit of doubt any further.

Thank you very much for your patience so far.

> I don't give a damn about whether or not Emacs should allow HIG
> conformant pasting [...]

Well, you don't "give a damn about that excuse for an editor".

[...]
> Well, I have been working for extended periods of time in foreign
> countries and unless I know I will leave with in a short time, I
> always expect myself and other foreigners I work with who are also
> there for extended periods of time to pick up local customs and the
> local language.
[...]

That's fine. But this is gnu.emacs.help, a Usenet community with its
own customs and its own idea of what is regarded as "good manners".

Hic Rhodos, hic salta!

[...]
> Mind you, I didn't post to gnu.emacs.advocacy, but to gnu.emacs.help
[...]

And that was wrong.

We don't have gnu.emacs.advocacy, but we sometimes use
alt.religion.emacs for that.

This has the problem that flame wars have to stay interesting or funny
or else they are buried in jokes aluding to the "Emacs religion". But
one might consider this as a feature.

I set a Follow-up to alt.religion.emacs in my first post to this
particular subthread. If you hadn't ignored it, we would discuss this
now in the proper forum.

    Oliver
-- 
18 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...

It was the advice of Eli Zaretskii not to respond to anyting that
doesn't address the questions I had asked. I think this was good
advice and I am going to follow it. So therefore, I hope you will
excuse me not to respond to your lenghty post. However, there is
something that caught my eye because I don't really understand what it
means ...

> I set a Follow-up to alt.religion.emacs in my first post to this
> particular subthread. If you hadn't ignored it, we would discuss this
> now in the proper forum.

Would you care to explain this?

First, all I can see is "gnu.emacs.help" and "comp.sys.mac.apps", so I
don't really understand what you mean by "follow up set to
alt.religion.emacs"

Secondly, I don't understand the "If you hadn't ignored it" part
either, since I didn't see any other group. Rest assured, if I had, I
would have removed the group. So, if there are any invisible things
going on that I cannot see when using Google's web interface, I'd like
to know about them.

tia
rgds
bk

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Oliver Scholz]

bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:

> Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...
[...]
>> I set a Follow-up to alt.religion.emacs in my first post to this
>> particular subthread. If you hadn't ignored it, we would discuss this
>> now in the proper forum.
>
> Would you care to explain this?
>
> First, all I can see is "gnu.emacs.help" and "comp.sys.mac.apps", so I
> don't really understand what you mean by "follow up set to
> alt.religion.emacs"

I have not crossposted to alt.religion.emacs. Maybe that was a
mistake. I have added the line "Follow-up: alt.religion.emacs" to the
header of my post. This Follow-up header is supposed to cause a
recipient's newsreader to post follow-ups to a different newsgroup. I
believe that this is some RFC standard, but I don't know for sure. It
is common practise in many of the newsgroups I read to use this to
change the group if a discussion has become off-topic or is supected
to become off-topic. It is common to add line like "Follow up set to
..." or "F'up to: ..." to one's post to indicate to silent readers
that follow-ups are expected to appear in a different group.

> Secondly, I don't understand the "If you hadn't ignored it" part
> either, since I didn't see any other group. Rest assured, if I had, I
> would have removed the group. So, if there are any invisible things
> going on that I cannot see when using Google's web interface, I'd like
> to know about them.
[...]

I was not aware that the web interface in Google does not follow this
convention nor that you use it. So I assumed it was intentional. Sorry
for that.

    Oliver
-- 
19 Floréal an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <u3cjpucsv.fsf@ID-87814.user.dfncis.de>,
Oliver Scholz  <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote:
>bk_usenet@yahoo.co.uk (BK) writes:
>
>> Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> wrote ...
>[...]
>>> I set a Follow-up to alt.religion.emacs in my first post to this
>>> particular subthread. If you hadn't ignored it, we would discuss this
>>> now in the proper forum.
>>
>> Would you care to explain this?
>>
>> First, all I can see is "gnu.emacs.help" and "comp.sys.mac.apps", so I
>> don't really understand what you mean by "follow up set to
>> alt.religion.emacs"
>
>I have not crossposted to alt.religion.emacs. Maybe that was a
>mistake. I have added the line "Follow-up: alt.religion.emacs" to the
>header of my post. This Follow-up header is supposed to cause a
>recipient's newsreader to post follow-ups to a different newsgroup. I
>believe that this is some RFC standard, but I don't know for sure. It
>is common practise in many of the newsgroups I read to use this to
>change the group if a discussion has become off-topic or is supected
>to become off-topic. It is common to add line like "Follow up set to
>..." or "F'up to: ..." to one's post to indicate to silent readers
>that follow-ups are expected to appear in a different group.

It seems like bad practice to direct followups to a group not in the
original list.  The replies will show up there, but the original message to
which they refer will not, so the readers of that group will find it
confusing.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, a Level(3) Company, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[Björn Lindström]

Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com> writes:

> It seems like bad practice to direct followups to a group not in the
> original list.  The replies will show up there, but the original message to
> which they refer will not, so the readers of that group will find it
> confusing.

That's right. The Follow-up header is meant to point out which one of
the crossposted groups is appropriate to reply to. If you use it to move
a discussion from one group to the other you should certainly post the
message to it as well.

-- 
Björn Lindström <bkhl@privat.utfors.se>
Home page -> http://hem.fyristorg.com/bkhl/
Blog -> http://bkhl.livejournal.com/
Elektrubadur demo -> http://hem.fyristorg.com/bkhl/elektrubadur/

Re: Is Emacs on Aqua crippleware or is it just broken?

[BK]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il> wrote ...

> As for the flamewars, if you are not interested in them, simply ignore
> that part of the thread which leads there.

Fair enough, I'll follow your advice. thanks

rgds
bk