Re: Post-22.1 development?

[Jan Djärv]

Nick Roberts skrev:
>  >      > What does the feedback consist of?  Users saying they wish the GTK
>  >      > build were the default?  I believe there are some.  However, how many
>  >      > users said nothing because they are happy that GTK is NOT the default?
>  > 
>  >     There's a long thread on fedora-devel (Why isn't emacs installed by default)
>  > 
>  > I can't read it there, but I would like to know what it says
>  > that is relevant.
>  > 
>  > What did people there say about this particular question?
>  > And how many of them supported it?
>
> It's a bit rambling, but the relevant part is how Emacs doesn't sit naturally
> on a modern Desktop.  I don't fully understand the issues but Jan D. could
> probably explain them.

It is a lot of general comments but very few specific.  Also they seem to be 
based on a non-Gtk build of Emacs.  But even with a Gtk build, there are 
things lacking, and what I think they mean are:

Emacs does not use the desktop (Gnome) infratructure/API:s when it comes to:

- Printing, basically Emacs does not have a "modern" print dialog.

- Fonts, AA fonts and respecting the fonts selected by the user in his desktop 
preferences, including switching fonts on the fly when the user changes his 
preferences.  A font dialog chooser is missing.

- Themes, Emacs currently don't respect themes fully.  I.e. if the icons for 
the tool bar changes, Emacs still uses its own.  If the background/foreground 
color is changed, Emacs does that for Gtk widgets, but not for the main edit 
area.  Ditto for example, cursor colors, cursor shape, mouse pointer shape.

- Session management.  We have that now in 22.1, but Emacs does not restore 
the frame layout as it was.

Some minor things I can think of:

Drag and drop - We can't drag text or images from Emacs to another application.

Image support - Emacs does not use the Gnome infrastructure for this, so Emacs 
is limited to the image types it find libraries for at compile time.

And some things they may mean, but I'm not sure that it matters for a user:

Configuration - Emacs don't use what other Gnome applications use, i.e. GConf.
UTF-8/Pango   - Emacs has its own internationalization infrastructure
that sometime don't play nice with other apps (basically other Gnome apps assume
UTF-8 everywhere).
Gmome libraries - If Emacs where to use more Gnome libraries instead of having 
its own version of some code (session management, font handling, dialogs, 
configuration, themes, widgets, printing), Emacs would benefit automatically 
when these libraries are updated.


Now some of these are being done (AA fonts), some I have patches for (better 
theme handling, dnd), some are on my TODO-list, some we will probably never do 
(for example use GConf instead of ~/.emacs[.d]).

        Jan D.