Re: Emacs Lisp's future

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:
 > Dmitry Antipov <address@hidden> writes:

 > > Adopting Emacs?  Why not just use ICU?  This project's page claims about
 > > "GPL-compatible" free license (http://userguide.icu-project.org/icufaq).
 > 
 > Because ICU is not under the control of the GNU project.

You can say the same about the Linux kernel, for example.
Nevertheless, the HURD has never made it to ready-for-prime-time
status.  At some point it's worth delegating maintenance of 99% of
your needs to another project, and Emacs has already been through the
Mule-to-Unicode internal encoding conversion.  Would you really wish
that on another project?

 > In addition, Emacs' string handling and encoding/reencoding has a
 > longer history than UTF-8 and most such libraries.  It's mature,
 > and it definitely fits Emacs' bill.

I really doubt it will take much effort to move Emacs to ICU (compared
to grafting Emacs's complex internal facilities onto another project).