From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Carsten Dominik Subject: Re: Re: Support (or not) for Emacs 21, and XEmacs Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:03:42 +0200 Message-ID: <3658A4B7-E30A-4D7A-9781-C97A01931A13@gmail.com> References: <15649C3E-517D-433D-977F-06008C20A4F4@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1O3V6E-0006ol-3A for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:03:50 -0400 Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=45885 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O3V6C-0006o4-10 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:03:49 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O3V69-0005uM-U6 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:03:47 -0400 Received: from mail-ew0-f214.google.com ([209.85.219.214]:36983) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O3V69-0005uA-L4 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:03:45 -0400 Received: by ewy6 with SMTP id 6so1235686ewy.32 for ; Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:03:44 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Michael Sperber Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org Hi Michael, On Apr 18, 2010, at 10:22 AM, Michael Sperber wrote: > > Hi Carsten, > > many thanks for your e-mail! (And many thanks for your work on > org-mode, which is the best piece of software I've started using for a > few years.) > > Carsten Dominik writes: > >> However, I have recently more and more the feeling how having to >> cater for several Emacs versions is a drag. > > I understand and would feel the same in your situation. So I was > wondering if I could make it easy enough for you so org-mode could > keep > the XEmacs code in. > >> My feeling was also that the interest in the XEmacs side for >> Org-mode is low. To my knowledge there is no Org-mode package for >> XEmacs, and the number of user on the mailing list seems to be very >> limited. > > Right. However, the reason why this is so is trivial: org-mode is > GPLv3, and thus can't be a package for XEmacs, which is currently > still > GPLv2. (There has been a long and tedious discussion of this over in > XEmacs land which I'd like to spare you from.) However, we've pretty > much resolved the GPLv3 issues over the past few months, and I hope > that > we'll have a GPLv3 XEmacs very soon. At which point I'll personally > make an XEmacs package. > >> So let me start with a question: Is XEmacs still alive, innovative? >> There has been no major release (it seems to me) for a very long >> time. >> It was my feeling that the XEmacs project is on its way to a slow >> death. >> I may be wrong about this. > > Development, which was slow for a long time, has recently picked up > significantly. Releases are a problem, I admit: The developers > essentially all use the development branch, which is by now vastly > different from the 21.4 release. (Also, the GPLv3 issue has kept us > from being able to merge Emacs code for a long time.) But we'll do a > release at some point. > >> You propose to help. One way to go would be to continue a branch >> based on Org-mode 6.35, and to merge any new stuff into that branch. > > That's definitely a possibility. > >> So a dedicated XEmacs-related person could keep such an XEmacs. >> In my test branch where I remove compatibility code (not only >> XEmacs, but also Emacs 21, and I'd love to ditch support for >> Emacs 22 - even though I cannot do that just yet), quite some code >> has changed, and I am not sure how easy it would be to keep >> a compatibility branch up to date. > > Is there any way to leave the compatibility code in place and not > worry > about it, so long as it does not interfere with your work on the > current > Emacs? (I don't know how big that interference is, I must admit.) I > could then try to fix it up as development goes along. Well, here are some of the major annoyances for me: 1. posix character classes in regular expressions, thinks like [:alpha:] These are nice because they work well with arbitrary languages. Does XEmacs suppor these now? 2. The overlay API - I think XEmacs actually has a compatibility lib for these, is that correct? One of the things you could do it to figure out if I can also switch to the API calls overlays-in and overlays-at in that library. My own implementations are slightly different, and I am not sure I can rely on the ones in the xemacs library. 3. outline.el. Last time looked, XEmacs still had the horrible old outline.el which is pretty much impossible to program. I do have a port, xemacs/noutline.el in the Org distribution - if you could get that into XEmacs, that would get rid of a major annoyance, including complicated installation instructions. 4. Can you make XEmacs understand mouse-3 instead of button3 ? Or maybe it does understand these by now? If you would take it on yourself to make a package for XEmacs - that would be helpful, because then I can remove special installation instructions for XEmacs and just tell people to get the package. I guess you could make such a package anyway - even if it currently cannot get into the XEmacs distribution because of license discussions. The compromise for me would be this: - You fix the things above. - I leave the rest of the necessary compatibility code in - I program any new features with whatever is available in Emacs 22/23 and rely on you to make it XEmacs compatible..... Cheers - Carsten