Re: Malformed interactive spec in replace.el

[David Kastrup]

Juanma Barranquero <address@hidden> writes:

> On 06 Jul 2004 11:26:41 +0200
> David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > Our policy is feature freeze right now.  "Policy" does not mean
> > that exceptions are impossible, but then we should have some
> > consensus about them.
> 
> I know.
> 
> > So you claim this is just Stefan's way of suggesting he thinks we
> > should not concentrate on the release?
> 
> No.  What I "claim", if I do claim anything at all, is that in many
> projects, the line between "bugfix" and "little feature" is vague

It wasn't here as far as I was able to discern.

> > I fail to see those changes as an "outcome" to an "experiment" trying
> > to see whether we can "restrict outselves into working to get a
> > release out".
> 
> I'm not talking about those changes.  I'm saying that, in the two or
> three months we've been on pre-release mode, there's been quite a
> few comments (mostly by RMS and you, IIRC) about the need to focus
> on the release.  That would suggest that people is (at least, on
> your and RMS' eyes) not doing it.  Doesn't that mean anything?

You mean that when a team trainer or team mate is telling his players
to try harder, the conclusion should be that they all stop trying
because it appears it would take an effort to succeed?

> But it's hard (if ever posible, or desirable) to push people one way
> or other.

Reminding people of things we all agreed on is not "pushing" in my
book.  I know that I am responsible for a lot of recent post-freeze
movement of replace.el, and I start being sorry for it.  Not because
it was a bad idea to rather implement sensible additional semantics
in the normal replacement commands than document the more awkward
query-replace-regexp-eval, but because this has escalated from
implementing \, in the interactive regexp reader to adding \? as a
replacement for documenting the non-satisfactory \,(read-string) idea.

If I had not already documented all of this in the manual, I'd be
sorely tempted to rip everything except the basic \, out again since
it would appear that I have been setting a bad example, even though I
tried to reach consensus on the list about the immediate desirability
of those changes before checking them in.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum