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Re: Experimental features


From: Andreas Röhler
Subject: Re: Experimental features
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:00:23 +0200
User-agent: KMail/1.8.2

Am Freitag, 22. Juni 2007 23:05 schrieb Stefan Monnier:
> Release practice during Emacs-21 at least is that new features could only
> appear in new major releases, except for a few small exceptions.
>
> I'd like to change that to make released Emacsen evolve faster.
> One way to do that would be to introduce the idea of "experimental"
> features which could be added to any minor release.
>
> An experimental feature would be disabled by default and the code should be
> written in such a way that as long as the feature is enabled, it's clearly
> obvious that it cannot have any negative effect.
>
> We'd then provide a way for the user to activate some of the experimental
> features from her .emacs file.  After some time, we would promote the new
> feature such that it is not experimental any more.
>
>
>         Stefan
>

Very good idea. But let's put the question more
thoroughly: as the realm of computing is vast and
ever expands, you have to give up the
idea to incorporate any valid program into core-Emacs
sooner or later.

Emacs already is unnecessary big for most of the
purposes.  Thus it starts not as quick as others, risks
not to be first choice for calling under certain
circumstances. That's a pity for me, because I prefer
it. Don't want to write any line without it, even not
to my mother. :)

I propose a more slim core emacs coming with an
install-shield, which lets users click features, some
of them may be marked as experimental too.

Given this, I would be glad to see common third-party
features as ESS, ECB, Emacspeak etc. reachable too that
way.

I'm aware this would mean a major work. However, it
must not be done at once. It offers great chances,
because it would ease the use for many people, thus
expanding the number of users.

Andreas Roehler




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