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Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?
From: |
Juri Linkov |
Subject: |
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ? |
Date: |
Sat, 17 Apr 2004 17:09:47 +0300 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.110002 (No Gnus v0.2) Emacs/21.3.50 (gnu/linux) |
Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:
> On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Juri Linkov wrote:
>>I must say that having news for old releases in one file is very
>>inconvenient. For example, isearching it for some newest feature, the
>>user can't see if the string that isearch displays is in the latest
>>version or in one of older versions!
>
> A beginning user will have this problem. An experienced user will know
> to type C-c C-u, or at the very least C-h m to find the appropriate
> command.
Surely, the user can type C-c C-u after every isearch result.
The problem is only in its inconvenience. C-c C-u doesn't
leave mark at previous position, so it's not easy to return
to previous position to continue isearch.
>>If having too many files is undesirable, then files for only _major_
>>releases could be created, with the NEWS file containing news for the
>>latest _minor_ release:
>
>>NEWS -- news for 21.4
>>NEWS.21 -- news for 21.1, 21.2, 21.3
>>NEWS.20 -- news for all 20.*
>
> I disagree with Juri entirely here. As a package developer, I'll often
> want to ask a question like "What's the earliest Emacs version that
> supports syntax-table text properties?", and a quick "C-h n C-s",
> followed up with a few "C-c C-u"s finds it easily enough.
You will not find an answer to your question in the NEWS file
if a feature was introduced in earlier Emacs versions described
in ONEWS(\.[1-9])?.
> If NEWS were to be split up as described, I'd have to formulate a grep
> command.
The current situation with news spread across multiple files
is not better. However, one could write a script similar to
lib-src/grep-changelog.
> [Aside: Emacs facilities for searching through several files
> seem strangely poor.]
There are M-x multi-occur-by-filename-regexp and `A' in Dired.
Or what did you mean?
> CC Mode is only just on the point of not supporting 19.34 any more. It
> will carry on supporting 20.x for some years to come. For this reason,
> I'd prefer NEWS to carry on carrying 20.x entries.
A split among O?NEWS(\.[1-9])? files is very arbitrary and can't
satisfy all different needs.
One reasonable solution would be to have only a pair of files:
NEWS with changes only for the latest release, and ONEWS for
all older releases. So users have to search only two files.
> It all boils down to the question, what is NEWS for, and whom is it for?
> At the top of the file it says "history of user-visible changes". To me,
> a "user" is somebody who's using Emacs to edit files (etc.), but when she
> starts writing packages, becomes something more than a user.
> "history of user-visible changes" doesn't seem to be an accurate
> discription of NEWS any more. For the last major release, Emacs 21.1,
> user-visible changes occupy 2170 lines, "user-invisible"
> ("hacker-visible?") changes occupy 2196 lines. Maybe an extract of NEWS
> containing only user-visible changes would be a good thing.
NEWS is only for users. Hackers read news from ChangeLog files.
--
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/
- Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Kim F. Storm, 2004/04/15
- Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Juri Linkov, 2004/04/15
- Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Miles Bader, 2004/04/15
- Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, David Kastrup, 2004/04/15
- Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Miles Bader, 2004/04/15
- Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Stefan Monnier, 2004/04/16
- Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Juri Linkov, 2004/04/17
- Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Richard Stallman, 2004/04/18
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Richard Stallman, 2004/04/17
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Alan Mackenzie, 2004/04/17
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Kim F. Storm, 2004/04/18
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Kai Grossjohann, 2004/04/19
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Alan Mackenzie, 2004/04/19
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Juri Linkov, 2004/04/21
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Kim F. Storm, 2004/04/22
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Juri Linkov, 2004/04/25
Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?, Richard Stallman, 2004/04/25