Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] Architectural renovation [was: funding free software R&D]

[Andrew Suffield]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 03:30:08PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> I'm not discounting your _intuition_; I respect that highly.  But the
> _words you say_ make me think "XEmacs" (ok, ok, to a guy with a hammer
> everything looks like a thumb, or whatever), and I just don't see the
> interest.  So something else is needed.

That one's easy. You need a problem that hasn't already been solved,
and that people actually care about. Making improvements to a program
which is already "adequete", isn't one, especially with a barrier to
entry that high.

>     Tom> Yes, it will take a lot of work to make a new one with enough
>     Tom> performance and eye-candy, and graphics features to have
>     Tom> impact
> 
> Starting from today's XEmacs, three man-years.  The features you
> mention are there, and performance is not a problem on today's 512MB
> RAM, 1 GHz machines.

*cough* XEmacs is sluggish as hell on my 512Mb/1GHz/nforce2
box. Especially with font-lock-mode enabled, there can be a noticable
delay between hitting a key and seeing the response. It's possibly the
single most irritating thing about XEmacs.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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