Re: Debian's idiosyncratic complexification of Emacs

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Jul 15, 2008, at 3:05 AM, Miles Bader wrote:

> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:
> > N.B. I come not to praise the Debian Emacs Policy, but to give it its
> > due: it's a reasonable compromise for the vast majority of users of
> > Emacsen.
>
> My impression is that debian's emacs _policy_ is more or less OK, and
> it's a good thing they have one, but the last time I bothered to  
> really
> look, the code implementing it was a huge mess.  I asked about it then
> on debian-emacsen, and the basic response was "we don't really
> understand it either".
>
> I hope it's better these days...

Whilst we are on the subject, for a large part of the last five years  
I have had to work with Debian and Debian based distributions and I  
quickly learned to simply not install the Debianised versions of GNU  
Emacs and install from source myself - particularly if I was  
interested in using Emacs 22 (and now 23) as the Debian packages were  
typically less stable.   Moreover I found that start up times for  
emacs on Debian are typically slow.

On a personal note - I find the idea of subverting the norms of an  
application to reduce usability in a distribution, not increase it.   
Especially where the tool in question (Emacs) is intended for a  
technical audience.

I am certain that the Debian set up is there with the best of  
intentions (just like their Common LISP setup), but nothing has made  
me more frustrated in a GNU/Linux distribution than the Emacs setup  
under debian, and anyone of my colleagues at my last employer we  
testify to that :)

--
Geoffrey Teale
Software and Technology Consultant, München
address@hidden