Re: 23.0.60; M-( and M-) should not be bound in ESC map

[Thomas Lord]

Not to prolong discussion, but:

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Well, are we currently starting another long heated discussion, not even
> talking about well established things?  I won't be carrying on with this
> thread too long.  ;-)
>
> A lot of the recent discussions haven't been about "the slightest
> change"s, they've been about changing the very core features of Emacs.
> Everybody on this list has strong views about these, and proposing a
> changes to them is bound to trigger off long heated discussions.
>
> Let's get back to Emacs bugs and features!
>   

Over the years, a fairly complex program like Emacs suffers from
"entropy" in the architecture of the core.  Slight mistakes get somewhat
locked in.  Then more slight mistakes get added.   And eventually you
can wind up with an intractable program.  Some would argue
we should have faith in "cleverness" and that clever simple fixes from
time to time will counter-act the entropy, but I am pretty sure that is
just wishful thinking in a project with a 20+ year history.


That doesn't mean people should argue about these impractical
changes here -- the main point of these recent comments.  But...

The entropy problem can be directly attacked by some obvious things
like starting a side discussion, elsewhere, about the architectural issues;
working out a plan to deal with them;  then executing that plan.


That's an idea but an incomplete one, because, really, whose got the
time?

And that observation ("whose got the time?") points out where the
deeper problem is:

The GNU project doesn't have enough money.

Money alone isn't the solution.  Given money for hacking, the next
hard problem is how to spend it wisely.   So there are two sides to that
coin.  Plans for getting more money and spending that money would need
to be developed hand in hand.

Oh well.   I am pretty conservative about what goes in my .emacs.   I mostly
use Emacs in ways not too far removed from using in v18 or so.   I'm not
worried about the imminent heat death of Emacs by a long shot.   Some of
the new features (e.g., Eclipse-inspired stuff) look potentially very cool.


But as this list (hopefully) concludes (at least for now) quibbling over 
hard
architectural issues (with no results from that quibbling), I just hope 
people
will think about the larger context and why these problems are hard to cope
with.   Something to stew around in the back of your mind.

Thanks,
-t