Re: could matlab-mode be in ELPA or the GNU emacs tree (like auctex and org-mode)?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>>> GNU Emacs runs on free and non free OS, so although that is important
>>> point I don't think it is essential.
>
>> But Emacs does not work better under Windows (or macOS) than under GNU/Linux.
>> E.g. we explicitly disabled support for colored fonts on macOS until we
>> had support for that under GNU/Linux.
>
>> So a comparable situation would be for a mode that works both with
>> Matlab and Octave but doesn't provide any feature which only works
>> with Matlab.
>
> I am not sure that the  command-shell would fit into that description. 
>
> Frankly, I don't see here a problem, in my understanding currently we
> have
>
>     1. One shell for octave
>
>     2. One shell for matlab

Other than (re)writing the indentation code in `octave-mode` (used as
a guinea pig back then for experimentation with SMIE), I know very
little about Octave and Matlab, so I really don't know at all what might
be the differences in terms of features that matlab/octave-mode could
offer when used with Matlab vs when used with Octave.

All I was saying is that in order to get `matlab-mode` into GNU ELPA,
you'll probably have to make sure it doesn't provide any feature that
only works with Matlab but not with Octave.

[ And if such a feature is missing, the way forward is to add it to the
  Octave side, potentially by adding some underlying feature to Octave
  itself and then adding support for it to the ELisp package.  ]


        Stefan