Re: EmacsW32 invocation options

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> From: no-spam@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)
> Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 00:09:14 +0200
> 
> IMO, we have to balance this "cross-platform consistency" with the
> user's expectation of "Emacs working seamlessly on _my_ platform".

I think we already do.  However, in this particular case, I cannot
believe that Windows users somehow expect the server to be on, while
users on other platforms do not.  There's no similar feature in any
popular Windows program, AFAIK, so I don't expect any expectations
about it.

> So why don't we try to find ways to accomodate people like Lennart who
> really wants to contribute, but whose ideas are too radical to be the
> default behaviour?

How do you do that when the radical idea in the case in point is
_precisely_ to change the default behavior?

> E.g. by supporting two installation options
> 
> a) maximum cross-platform consistency
> b) maximum adaptation to current platform APIs.

These a and b are not of the same category: the issue we are talking
about is user expectations, not programmer expectations.  API is
something users are not aware of and are not concerned with.

But other than that, I think Emacs already balances these two to a
very good measure, and the developers are well aware of user
expectations and the need to cater to them.  For example, the support
for different GUI toolkits (including the Windows one) is the result
of this.