Re: Emacs on GNUstep

[Fred Kiefer]

Adrian Robert wrote:
> I've managed to get emacs compiled and running under GNUstep!
>
> http://kamares.ucsd.edu/~arobert/GNUstep/emacs.html
>
> NOTE: This is not production status.  It is usable and stable with
>     my machine and usage, but there are outstanding issues.
>
> I started with the version distributed as "Emacs On Aqua" at
> http://emacs-on-aqua.sf.net .  This version traces its lineage back
> to an original port to NeXTstep by Carl Edman, which was
> successively modified for OpenStep, Rhapsody, and OS X, and updated
> most recently to GNU emacs 20.7.
>
> Compilation was not that bad; I just added a few GNUSTEP #ifdefs
> here and there.  Getting things running smoothly was tougher.  I
> encountered a number of issues with the GUI lib.  And I could only
> get it running with the Xlib backend.  Emacs makes a number of tough
> demands on the GNUstep environment, not least because it runs its
> own event loop and graphical update management.  Nonetheless, this
> shouldn't fundamentally conflict with GNUstep since it ran on all
> the previous *steps (and was quite stable on NeXTstep in my own
> experience).
>
> I've listed at the end the issues I encountered, most of which I made
> fixes for.  A patch against most recent CVS (just post-0.94) is
> available on the web page.  It would be great if people with more
> knowledge than myself could take a look at these.  We may want to
> commit some (in polished form), and perhaps reject others.  There
> are a number of cases where the Apple/OpenStep documentation is not
> clear on something, but the existence of code in ns-emacs implies
> that things in practice worked in a certain way.

First of all: I am impressed by the task you set yourself and how good 
GNUstep already seems to be fit for it, Although you had to help it a 
bit. :-)

I looked through the patch and most of the changes seem excellent to me. 
I am not that sure about the NSApplication window/menu update change. 
Perhaps we all should think about this.
Other places that you suggest for cleanup surely need it. The timestamps 
for NSEvent are really a bit strange. Not sure about the resizing bit, 
but for setHiddenUntilMouseMoves I have a test and it works perfect 
there. BTW, all this code is shared between the different X backends 
(xlib, art, cairo), so the only specific problem you have with the xlib 
backend is that Courier is no fixed font.

Cheers
Fred