Re: Suggestion: Make tar-mode activated in Emacs

[David Masterson]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I am concerned that when people use a heavyweight concept such as
> "package system" to think about what they are doing, it will lead
> them to choose a heavyweight approach.  They might even get to
> thinking that the goal is to make as complete and powerful a package
> system as possible.

Agreed.  I have a tendency to use larger conceptual terms than are
necessary to try to get an idea across (especially when I can't think
of a term to more fine tune the idea).

>>     * Each package has an "autoloads" script which establishes all the
>>       important functions of the package that the user might call.
>>     * Each package has a "custom-loads" script which finds all the
>>       customization variables of the package so that its ready to be
>>       customized by the user even before its loaded

> Something like this could be useful, if the details are designed
> with a view keeping it simple overall.  We should avoid talking or
> thinking about it as a "package system".

In this case, it looks like the tools for this are already in Emacs
(autoloads.el and cus-dep.el).  All that needs to be done is to put it
together into a methodology of use and have that documented so that
the big packages (Gnus, VM, etc.) can start uniformly following it.

-- 
David Masterson
Sr. R&D Engineer
Synopsys, Inc.