Re: Adapt fixcc.py to use Astyle instead of emacs (issue4662074)

[Carl Sorensen]

On 7/4/11 3:28 AM, "Jan Nieuwenhuizen" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Trevor Daniels writes:
> 
>> I agree.  This is a big improvement, and would
>> give us control over the layout style ourselves
>> (rather than "what emacs does").
> 
> While the work being done here is possibly a good thing, let me remind
> you once more that we are a GNU project and thus use the GNU standards
> and thus we need no control over, we need not decide about, we need not
> discuss layout style.  That's a feature.
> 
> The GNU standards are implemented by Emacs, and if it makes an error,
> then that's a serious bug that should be reported (to emacs).  It seems
> to me that someone is spending a lot of effort `just' to accomodate
> people who haven't found how awesome Emacs is to edit code and thus
> introduce layout problems.  This makes it now easier to use another
> editor than Emacs, which may or may not be an improvement.  While
> choice is good, in this case it decreases the need for non-Emacs
> users to try Emacs, and I'm not at all sure if that's a feature.

I've tried Emacs, and I can't see the benefits justifying fighting through
the learning curve.  It's not comfortable for me; I have 30+ years of
experience with vi(m), so it's hardwired in my bones.

We need more, not fewer, developers on LilyPond.  Why would we want to force
people to try Emacs as a condition of helping out with LilyPond?  Do we want
to try to prohibit people from using Jedit, or Frescobaldi, since they're
not Emacs?  

And I refuse, on principle, to accept a standard that says "do it the way
software package XYZ does it."  This is not a standard, it's an excuse for
not having a standard.  That's behavior I'd expect from a proprietary
software house, not from an organization that advocates software freedom.
It's a peculiar type of freedom that says "you're free to do anything you
want with the software, except make changes in an editor other than our
approved editor."  Now I realize that nobody is forced to follow the GNU
coding standards; they can modify the code to their heart's content and keep
a separate distro from the official distro.  But there's something
philosophically wrong about this, and it seems to me that it's largely
laziness on the part of the FSF.    They are unwilling to define a standard
that is other than machine-readable (a set of elisp macros and settings is
only machine-readable, even if it's human understandable).

So although this is a GNU project, I feel perfectly comfortable with
advocating a style that is enforced by a project-specific tool that can be
used by contributors working in any editor, rather than tying it to Emacs.

Thanks,

Carl