Re: face for non-ASCII characters

[Lennart Borgman]

2011/4/21 Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>:
> On Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:00:38 +0200 Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> LB> 2011/4/21 Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>:
>>> On Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:42:08 +0200 Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
> LB> You are maybe misunderstanding part of this. For me the transition is
> LB> the problem (and maybe the current lack of dynamic loading of
> LB> libraries from ELPA).
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what you mean about dynamic loading.
>
> LB> What I mean here is what can be used in nXhtml: If you (require
> LB> 'somelib) and somelib.el is not on your computer then you can have it
> LB> automatically downloaded from nXhtml repository (with a possibility to
> LB> check the code before actually installing it).
>
> I would be strongly opposed to opportunistic package installations in
> general, although nXhtml can use it internally of course.

Why is the word opportunistic used by you here? I do not have time to
discuss if you do not take it seriously. Please describe exactly what
it is you do not like instead.


>>> Package installation from the GNU ELPA (and ELPA in general) is
>>> static: you install what you want synchronously, there is no
>>> "auto-install this when I need it" functionality.  Do you mean this
>>> is an issue?
>
> LB> Yes. It makes it more difficult to integrate elisp libraries. This is
> LB> one of the reasons I have kept so many things in nXhtml. If ELPA had
> LB> that possibility I would not hesitate to move things into ELPA.
> LB> (Unfortunately for this to work realy  reliable a (simple) change in
> LB> `require' is needed.)
>
> You should make that dynamic loading proposal separately and maybe it
> will be accepted, but as far as markchars.el goes, since it will reside
> in nXhtml, you can still do the nXhtml opportunistic installs if the
> user hasn't installed it from the GNU ELPA statically.

You are greatly exaggerating. The difference between ELPA and nXhtml
here is that nXhtml will propose that you can install a library to get
things working while ELPA will not do that. So I think the way nXhtml
handles this just makes things easier for the user. (And I  would be
glad if ELPA did this instead of nXhtml. I really do not want the code
there. And I do not want markchars.el either there.)

>>> As I said markchars.el can be simply mirrored into the GNU ELPA nightly
>>> from the nXhtml repository.  Is that the road you're referring to?  Or
>>> does something else about the mirroring worry you?  How would you like
>>> to tell users to install it, if my proposal is not OK for some reason?
>
> LB> At the moment just grab it from the nXhtml repository. You can
> LB> download it from the web page there.
>
> Sorry, is "just grab it" advice for me to mirror into the GNU ELPA, or
> advice for the end user?  I hope it's the former but just making sure...

At first sight one might think that your proposal to mirror
markchars.el into ELPA is not troublesome. However you may end up with
two versions of markchars.el if you mirror it into ELPA now.

I would be glad to have it in ELPA - if just the automatic
installation could be fixed too.

But you are however of course free to do what you want.