Re: linum.el -- Display line numbers to the left of buffers

[Kim F. Storm]

"Drew Adams" <address@hidden> writes:

> The Emacs user community is not synonymous with the Emacs developers. Emacs
> developers such as Kim are primarily concerned with the latest and greatest
> stuff they are developing - they don't often look back. 

That's true.  

I first wrote ido and cua for Emacs 20 and 21, and those versions are still
available and useful for users of those versions.  

However, my time only allows me to keep those packages updated for Emacs 22,
so if you want the latest and greatest versions of the packages I maintain,
you have to upgrade your Emacs too.

And there are no up-to-date XEmacs versions either, because I have
neither the time, nor the interest to provide them.

>                                                         Writers of libraries
> that are not part of the Emacs distribution are often more concerned about
> compatibility for users of different releases and even different flavors of
> Emacs (e.g. XEmacs).

They might be concerned, yes, but I don't think anyone can dictate
that a package author mustkeep their code backwards compatible -- even
when it _is_ possible.

If the package author want to do so, it is ok, but for the specific
case of linum.el, alternative packages already exist which works ok
with older Emacsen, so why look back, rather than look forwards, and
provide some _new_ features for the latest and greatest Emacs?

-- 
Kim F. Storm  http://www.cua.dk