Re: face for non-ASCII characters

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ted Zlatanov writes:
 > On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:29:39 -0400 Chong Yidong <address@hidden> wrote: 

 > CY> So this kind of functionality might tend to encourage end-runs
 > CY> around mainline Emacs ("come use my version, and all this extra
 > CY> functionality is magically turned on!").

That ship sailed when Richard released Emacs under a free license.
Cf. the Mac versions, or the 15-year history of Mule before it was
included in the mainline, or Epoch.  Experience shows that most users
return to the mainline.

 > We could enforce the rule that you're only allowed to recommend other
 > packages that live within the same ELPA or something even more carefully
 > controlled (a fsf-kevin-bacon-number equal or greater than the current
 > one, if you know what I mean).

You can't (and shouldn't try to) enforce anything.  If somebody finds
the restrictions onerous, they'll fork the package library (or all of
Emacs, whichever seems more convenient at the time).  If others find
the restrictions onerous, they'll install the forked version.  That's
what free software means.

Eventually there will be a "google this package and install it for me"
functionality.  I think a better way to go is to add a way to filter
on that functionality such that the user can white- or blacklist
certain URLs, and the package manager will query for URLs not matched
by either list.  Default the whitelist to (<GNU ELPA>) and the
blacklist to t (ie, everything not in the whitelist).

Cf. the Debian free, contrib, non-free hierarchy, and Gentoo's
allowed-licenses facilty.