Re: AUCTeX and XEmacs

>>>>> "David" == David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org> writes:

    David> Yes, but Uwe basically admits to having no clue about
    David> either the XEmacs packaging system as well as AUCTeX
    David> internals.

Once we get the packaging stuff done _once_, it will continue to work
until the next time you make major changes to configure.  I think we
can trust you not to do that just to make Uwe's life hard.    Most of
the scutwork of releasing packages and moving them to servers, etc, is
done by Norbert Koch, as part of the XEmacs project.  Uwe's role is
(1) to keep up with AUCTeX lists etc, and (2) to maintain a vendor
branch of AUCTeX in the XEmacs CVS repository.  (Of course he can do
any other work he wants to, but that's what the package system asks of
him.)

    David> But he really is involved with nothing except turning
    David> AUCTeX into a package, and all of the rest of XEmacs
    David> compatibility/support falls to the lot of non-XEmacs users.

Something is very wrong with that picture, IMO, unless you really want
to do it for reasons of your own.  That wouldn't surprise me; I've
gone out of my way for ports, packages, and/or versions of packages I
don't use, either for hack value or public service.  I'll probably end
up doing it again real soon, for AUCTeX and maybe preview-latex,
unless somebody beats me to it.  But it's not very stable; really the
users should be doing this.

    David> You need to organize prerelease stuff on different servers
    David> and so on.  Again, this means quite a bit of work of Uwe,
    David> not least of all finding out about all this.

Sure, but (so far) he's not complaining about the work, he's just sad
it's not progressing faster.

    David> And Uwe is not part of the AUCTeX project?

That's not what I said; what I said was that the initiative for Uwe
becoming the XEmacs package maintainer came from the XEmacs project
side of things.  He came to us and said "don't you think there should
be a release of AUCTeX 11.x?"  And, in proper rms fashion, we (I think
it was me, but it could very well have been Steve Y or Ville or
Norbert, I forget) replied, "would you like to do that?"

    David> Which is the reason that I have no way to get information
    David> other than from the XEmacs lists.

    David> Which turns out into hours of letting myself be berated and
    David> defending myself every time, and thus is an expensive
    David> option.

Well, if you'd start by asking us for help in doing things _before_
you waste a couple man-months on becoming half an expert in XEmacs
arcana, rather than coming in ex post and berating us for all the time
you wasted, you could save both on development effort and flame time.

_Please_ ask us for help.  We _love_ working on XEmacs.  Sure, there's
a risk you might be told, "sorry, nobody here has enough interest and
time," but in that case you've lost very little, right?

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