Re: EmacsW32 invocation options

[Kim F. Storm]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> I don't see how someone using the freedom of GPL should be accused of
>> being destructive, just because he does something you don't approve of.
>
> Kim, I hope you've read this thread before responding, because you've
> taken one phrase out of context and jumped the gun on it.

I did try to follow the arguments - but the discussion was going around
in circles, and was becoming quite personal.  Accusing Lennart of being
destructive was unjustified IMHO.

> (He might be better off choosing a less radical word than
> ``destructive'', but then he's not a native English speaker, so we all
> might cut him some slack.)  

Neither am I :-)

>                             The issue is how to use this freedom in
> the best interests of the community at large.

Lennart obviously believes that he is helping _part of_ the community
to a better Emacs experience.

> In this case, Lennart's attitude to put into his distribution every
> patch he finds useful, but cannot convince the Emacs developers to
> accept, is IMO not the best use of that freedom.  It is confusing to
> users who expect Emacs to behave as documented and to do that
> consistently on all platforms.  

IMO, we have to balance this "cross-platform consistency" with the
user's expectation of "Emacs working seamlessly on _my_ platform".

>                                 And it's an attitude that smells of
> schism and forking, which many of us will not approve, because it
> diminishes the already small group of active developers by spreading
> their insufficient resources between several competing projects.

So why don't we try to find ways to accomodate people like Lennart who
really wants to contribute, but whose ideas are too radical to be the
default behaviour?

E.g. by supporting two installation options

a) maximum cross-platform consistency
b) maximum adaptation to current platform APIs.


> Sure, he does, and he deserves a lot of credit and thanks for that.
> As does Juanma, btw, who made emacslient work on Windows to begin
> with.

Sure.  I never said or meant otherwise.


-- 
Kim F. Storm  http://www.cua.dk