Re: [PATCH] (woman-always-choose-first-hit): New defcustom.

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:21:47 +0000
> From: xahlee@gmail.com
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > • The problems you mention are a far cry from making WoMan ``unusable''.
> 
> “unusable” is probably a exaggeration. I'm trying to express how it is  
> unusable to most users who are not emacs enthusiasts.

IMO, it is no less usable than `man', to newbies and veterans alike.

> consider emacs as a tool, and likewise man and woman are tools. People want  
> to run man/woman mostly to get the job done, namely, reading unix man page  
> in emacs. “man” works. However, woman is a improvement, but isn't default.  

`woman' is not meant to be an improvement.  From the commentary at the
beginning of woman.el:

    ;; WoMan implements a subset of the formatting performed by the Emacs
    ;; `man' (or `manual-entry') command to format a UN*X manual `page'
    ;; for display, but without calling any external programs.

IOW, it's a clone of `man' that does not require `man' the external
command.  That's all there is to it.  On some platforms, that's a heck
of an advantage; on others, it isn't.

> The extra option of minor improvement to user adds a slight complexity. But  
> adding the fact that woman itself provides some rough edges. So for some  
> emacs user who are beginning to be adventurous, when they read about woman  
> and try it, its problem is frustrating, another tiny time drain in emacs.

`woman' works, period.  So does `man', of course.  Each one has its
quirks and bugs (I fixed one in each just the other day), but they are
minor bugs.  I use both, on 3 radically different platforms, and I
don't find any of them ``frustrating'', nor do they need my Emacs
expertise to show me a manual page in a reasonably legible way.

> I think most, or all of these can be fixed, without sacrificing ANY of  
> emacs's power.

Agreed.