Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Klaus Berndl <klaus.berndl@sdm.de>
> Date: 05 Jun 2005 15:04:01 +0200
> 
> BTW: This discussion leads for me to the old topic concerning the lack of a
> package-system of GNU-Emacs - IMHO one of the most disadvantages of GNU
> compared to XEmacs - surely, that one of XEmacs is not perfect (really not ;-)
> but after all it *IS* a package-system which can make live easier - at least for
> the users and for the newbies - maybe not for the package-programmers ;-)

Sorry, I don't see how a package-system could solve the bulk of the
problems here.  In my experience, the problem with Windows is that
there's no coherent set of tools and ports that will all work
seamlessly with Emacs, unless you install Cygwin Emacs and Cygwin
ports (and don't need any significant interaction with non-Cygwin
programs).  GnuWin32 are close, but not yet there, IMHO (no Bash, no
Ispell/Aspell, no Perl, no TeX, etc.)

That is why setting up a typical Windows box for Emacs and related
packages is hard: you need to tinker with many individual ports
gathered from all over, and you need to read the fine print in
numerous README files to understand the subtle problems an limitations
with the ports.

So packaging, IMHO, is the least of our problems: we need to come up
with a good set of ports first.