Re: Bloat in the Emacs Windows package

[Björn Lindqvist]

Den ons 17 apr. 2019 kl 19:27 skrev Phillip Lord <address@hidden>:
> It's also possible to turn on NTFS file compression which will remove
> both this and lots of other duplications in the Emacs install. AFAIK,
> this is a user option, however, although I might be able to do it with
> the installer version for Emacs-27.

True, but remember that not all Windows users have administrator
access on their machines. For example, a loooong way back in
university we students had to create a Java project using NetBeans (or
was it Eclipse? IntelliJ? I don't remember) on Windows. I didn't like
NetBeans so I instead installed Emacs (21 I think) to my H: drive
which was 500M of personal space allocated to each student.

A few years later while on vacation in southern Europe I had to write a
(paper) letter to some government agency. I didn't have a laptop with
me, so I instead went to an internet cafe, downloaded Emacs into a
temporary directory, wrote the letter in Emacs and printed it.

Now in each of these cases I didn't have to use Emacs. I could have
used NetBeans as the instructor wanted and I could have written my
letter in write.exe. But it felt nice that Emacs had my back and that
I could work the way I wanted. If Emacs would have been to slow to
download, or taken up to much disk space, I wouldn't have been able
to.

Since then, both bandwidth and disk space has gotten cheaper. But I
bet there are still lots of situations where Emacs' smallness is
important. Especially in poorer parts of the world.


--
mvh/best regards Björn Lindqvist