Re: Emacs Installer for MS Windows

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Steven Tamm <steventamm@mac.com> writes:

> Point taken.  I guess I should have said "FSF Emacs"?

If you really want to get people upset, that is a pretty certain way
to do so.  Emacs is Emacs, and the FSF, while being the copyright
holder, is so on behalf of the GNU project and its developers.

If someone chose to forked a version of AUCTeX (of which I am
maintainer) and then somebody suggested that the version that I am
maintaining and distributing should be renamed to "Kastrup AUCTeX", I
would be offended.  Because the project is not just a private pet of
mine.

The proper directory name for Emacs is usually "emacs" on Unix-like
systems (which are traditionally all-lowercase).  As a subdirectory of
"C:\My Programs" however, "Emacs" would appear more appropriate.

There is no reason to call the directory anything else, since no other
program calls itself "Emacs".  The only possible consideration might
be appending the version number to better facilitate parallel
installations of multiple Emacsen.  However, I would advise against
making this the default: it only means that it becomes harder to find
the currently "canonical" Emacs on a computer.  If somebody wants to
install parallel versions, he can easily enough change the default
name.

> One problem with the Mac OS X version of Emacs is being able to
> distinguish the windowing system/gui used: None (curses), X11, or
> Carbon.  On my machine I have each version running; and on windows I
> have an NT/Win32 and a cygwin (X11) version as well.  Should the
> installer make explicit which GUI version it is installing?

It should display it, but I don't think it should be reflected in the
proposed default name of the directory.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum