Re: Windows emacs-25.1 i686 vs x86_64?

[Daniel Colascione <dancol@dancol.org>]

On 11/06/2016 01:54 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Windows/ME was never popular, even when it was released
>
> As I understand it, that "WinME" label is a catchall that includes the
> MS-Windows 9x line, and "0.01%" is so small that I doubt whether it is
> statistically significant. In practice then 9x line has transitioned
> from unsupported (ten years ago) to on-its-way-out (five years ago) to
> dead (now, almost everywhere), and any old decisions that assumed 9x's
> viability are now obsolete.
>
> In GNU projects, we typically stop worrying about an underlying platform
> when its original supplier stops supporting it. For example, Emacs no
> longer worries about IRIX because SGI stopped supporting IRIX in 2013.
> Although MS-Windows 9x is special partly because it was so popular long
> ago, Emacs need not support 9x indefinitely, and Emacs's documentation
> should not give Emacs users the incorrect impression that 9x is still a
> live platform.

It would be nice to have a data-based condition for dropping 9X support. 
Windows 9X already well beyond the level of dead past which we stop 
supporting other platforms, and it'd be nice to have a clear 
understanding of when we can finally drop 9X support --- this way, we'll 
know when we can drop XP support.