Re: adding packages to Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> While we are at it (adding calc and gnuserv to Emacs), why not add elib?

The `cookie' part of elib is pretty much already there under the
name `ewoc'.  The `string' part is not needed any more.  The `stack'
part is of dubious interest.

> It appears to be stable

Hasn't been touched in years, so I guess it counts as stable.

> and widely used,

I'm much less sure about that part.  It seems that jde used it,
but I'm not sure if it still uses it.  It used the binary-tree part
to store a buffer-location-to-semantic-info table, but I remember
rumors that it was supposed to be switched to overlays instead,
so I'm not sure if it still uses that.
Apart from the jde, the only two other packages I know of that
used elib are PCL-CVS (now part of Emacs and using `ewoc' instead)
and some wnn input method for XEmacs that doesn't work for Emacs.

> and is already distributed from <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/>.

Indeed.  We have all the relevant papers.
But when I integrated PCL-CVS we considered this option (which would
have been easier than to extract `ewoc') and decided not to bother.

I don't think it makes any sense to include the whole elib as is,
but maybe some of the binary tree code could be used.

Did you have a particular need/use in mind ?


        Stefan