Would it be ok to have a link to emacsforosx.com on the emacs homepage?

Would it be ok to have a link to emacsforosx.com on the emacs homepage?

[Nicolas Petton]

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Hi guys,

I'm resuming my work on the emacs homepage, and I'm wondering if it'd be
ok to link to http://emacsforosx.com for the OS X download link?

Nico
-- 
Nicolas Petton
http://nicolas-petton.fr

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Re: Would it be ok to have a link to emacsforosx.com on the emacs homepage?

[Tim Cross]

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Hi Nico,

I think you need to be vary careful about putting that link in as it gives
the impression it is the preferred installation mechanism for emacs under
OSX. If we add that link, then you probably need to also add the homebrew
page and what about macports? Should probably be vary clear that the links
are just links without any recommendations etc.

Personally, I prefer homebrew over emacsforosx.com as it just does a build
from git where emacsforosx.com tries to be a little more 'clever' and can
easily fall into the same pitfalls as many 'canned' emacs configurations -
often OK at first, but then when you try to customize or you run into a
problem, everything becomes troublesome and your not sure where to get
help.

On 9 February 2016 at 04:18, Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I'm resuming my work on the emacs homepage, and I'm wondering if it'd be
> ok to link to http://emacsforosx.com for the OS X download link?
>
> Nico
> --
> Nicolas Petton
> http://nicolas-petton.fr
>



-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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Re: Would it be ok to have a link to emacsforosx.com on the emacs homepage?

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> writes:

> I'm resuming my work on the emacs homepage, and I'm wondering if it'd be ok
> to link to http://emacsforosx.com for the OS X download link?

This raises the question of whether we should have links to the other builds
of Emacs that are in the wild, that users might be interested in knowing about
(Nix, Brew, Macports, etc), and how to access them.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: Would it be ok to have a link to emacsforosx.com on the emacs homepage?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > This raises the question of whether we should have links to the other builds
  > of Emacs that are in the wild, that users might be interested in knowing about
  > (Nix, Brew, Macports, etc), and how to access them.

Please discuss them with me before adding them.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Would it be ok to have a link to emacsforosx.com on the emacs homepage?

[Tim Cross]

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Hi David,

sorry for the slow response.

to be clear, I think what you have done with emacsformacosx.com is pretty
damn cool and I suspect it would be good for many people who are looking to
get started with emacs on OS X.  However, I fear such efforts to make life
easier for new users can be counter productive because the user themselves
can miss some crucial points

I also have no objection to the Emacs docs having some links to resources
which can be useful when getting emacs to run on a platform. However, I do
think it is important to be wary of giving one particular effort along
these lines a pseudo official stamp of approval. It may also be wise to
include notes or highlight limitations/differences these efforts create.

With respect to emacsformacosx.com, I guess I have three broad concerns and
I would clearly state that perhaps they are overstated. They probably
reflect more my pragmatic nature than anything else.

1. Yes, the ruby launcher is part of it, as is putting the site-lisp
directory in Library/Applicaiton Support etc. While this does seem to be
the correct thing to do on OSX, it isn't (IMO) explicit enough and can
cause confusion for the end user if/when they run into issues and when they
turn to the emacs docs, won't find anything to help clarify matters.

2. Lack of library support. There is a lot of emacs functionality which
depends on external libraries. However, as you want to build binaries which
run on all systems, you need to build to what is there by default - the
lowest common denominator. I've seen a number of people having issues with
emacs on OSX because the feature they are trying to use isn't available
because the support libs have not been compiled in. While this can be an
issue with any of the different methods of installing emacw under OS X, the
more removed the user is fromthe process, the less obvious the connection.

3.  My final point really relates to the previous two and I guess is really
a personal preference more than anything else. With emacs in particular, I
think it is good to be as close to the build process as possible. However,
we also need to make sure it isn't too low level as the barriers to entry
would be too high. I guess this is why I prefer a homebrew approach over
the emacsforosx.com approach. You are closer to the build and can easily
add support for additional libraries. Perhaps more relevant is that
homebrew also makes it easy to add those additional libraries - in a sense,
gettinng to know a single tool gives you a much broader solution as it also
allow you to install things like gnuTLS or libs to support graphics and
doc-view etc.

Something which might help with emacsforosx.com might be to add some
additional info tot he web site regarding support libraries and how to add
support for particular emcs features - for example, adding gnuTLS support
so that things which use https connections can operate or adding support
for graphics libs etc. Perhpas making it clear what features that are part
of emacs will not work without additional libraries might help (though I
also think that perhaps emacs itself could possibly have improved docs in
this area - there has been more than once where I've found it challenging
to find exactly which libs are needed for a feautre).

With regard to the general question of having links/pointers to external
resources for building emacs on different platforms I'm not sure if this
should be in the emacs documentation or whether a better idea would be to
refer to a page on a user managed resource, such as the emacs wiki. My
preference is for official emacs documentation to reference a page on the
emacs wiki which would contain links to various howtos and other external
docs relating to installing emacs on various platforms.

Tim

On 12 February 2016 at 23:34, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > This raises the question of whether we should have links to the other
> builds
>   > of Emacs that are in the wild, that users might be interested in
> knowing about
>   > (Nix, Brew, Macports, etc), and how to access them.
>
> Please discuss them with me before adding them.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
> Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.
>
>
>


-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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