Re: Post-22.1 development?

[Jan Djärv]

Tom Tromey skrev:
> > > > > > "Jan" == Jan Djärv <address@hidden> writes:
>
> Jan> - Printing, basically Emacs does not have a "modern" print dialog.
>
> I thought the comment here was just about using the wrong program to
> access printing.  But, I'm not an expert here.

Neither am I.  The comments weren't detailed.  But by using the gnome printing 
code, I guess Emacs would automatically use the right program.


> Jan> - Fonts, AA fonts and respecting the fonts selected by the user
> Jan> in his desktop preferences, including switching fonts on the fly
> Jan> when the user changes his preferences.  A font dialog chooser is
> Jan> missing.
>
> Here I thought the problem was Emacs using some old font infrastructure.

If you consider non-AA fonts the old infrastructure (i.e. basic X11), so yes. 
 But I don't think X11 will suddenly drop all its fonts and the related 
library calls.  Emacs uses plain X11, I don't see why it is such a pain to 
maintain that.  There must be other programs besides Emacs that uses that.

> Jan> - Session management.  We have that now in 22.1, but Emacs does
> Jan> not restore the frame layout as it was.
>
> IMO -- don't bother with this.  The Gnome trend is away from session
> management anyhow.

Okay, good to know.

> In general my understanding of the issue from the Fedora POV is that
> keeping some old infrastructure (old fonts, old print subsystem,
> whatever) around is a pain.  Whether or not Emacs looks "Gnome-like"
> is not really a distro issue.  So the issue is, make sure Emacs is
> using the current blessed technology.

As you may have noticed, an Emacs release takes time, and in that time the 
blessed technology may have changed several times (like printing).  But any 
printing technology that doesn't offer a plain lpr command is severly broken IMHO.

> While I think in some cases better desktop integration is nice, Emacs
> is also unusual and it doesn't always make sense to try to make it fit
> in.  I suppose this is the "old time Emacs user" approach :)

Emacs is multiplatform, whereas Gnome isn't.  Emacs has as a goal to be useful 
without Gnome.  There is a conflict here.

> That said, there are a couple desktop integration areas I'm interested
> in:
>
> * Notification area support.  I have a hacked zenity that does most of
>   what I want -- albeit poorly.  Direct support in Emacs would be much
>   better.

What would you think Emacs should do in the notification area?  Mail 
notification from GNUS and such, or just accessable from elisp?

> * Keyring support.  I have some code for this (supporting either the
>   Gnome keyring or a private Emacs-specific one), but I haven't wired
>   it in to all the code in Emacs that uses passwords.

That would be nice, it could be handy for Tramp and such.  But I don't think 
passwords are handeled in a central place in Emacs yet.  Something to work on.

        Jan D.