Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Jean Louis]

* Thibaut Verron <thibaut.verron@gmail.com> [2020-10-11 22:16]:
> > I can perfectly use http://elpa.gnu.org through Emacs
> >
> > I cannot at all use https://melpa.org through Emacs, it is
> > impossible. It is common sense not to design sites in such stunned way
> > (sorry I was looking for synonyms of "stupid" not to be too bold).
> 
> It seems reasonable to me that a list that changes every now and then
> (Elpa) is easier to serve statically than a list which is updated
> several times a day (Melpa).

What can be generated online, it can be generated statically, it is
matter of seconds. Thus I am not underestimating the webmaster of
MELPA. He did not want it in 2016, he does not want it now. There is
no "discussion" on the bug report, he closed the bug, finished. It
does not seem to be user friendly.

There is nothing interactive on MELPA to be served dynamically, there
is no user input other than clicking, there are no interactions. I do
not underestimate programmers and their intelligence. If MELPA would
be easily browsable, it would be easily duplicated as a website.

> But if the list of GNU Elpa is generated automatically, maybe the
> code to do that can be useful to Melpa.

Of course it can. For now it seem trivial, and can be done through
Emacs Lisp. 

> > Website of MELPA is ridiculous. If it promotes Emacs, it should be
> > accessible through Emacs. And now we discuss what Emacs users want,
> > example me, I don't want to be pushed around.
> 
> Or maybe Emacs should have a web browser which can run (free)
> javascript.

But why only javascript, maybe Emacs should have Emacs Lisp instead of
Javascript, that way we could run programs on Emacs by installing them
straight from websites without knowing what is going to happen, within
some safe environment so that it does not affect the
system. So far I know, any script could be included in web pages, it
all depends of plugins to browsers, I remember Perl could be included
in the web pages, and other programming languages, why not Emacs Lisp
then.

> I don't think so, for obvious security reasons, but then again I
> don't expect to be able to access all emacs-related websites from
> within Emacs.

That's what I am talking about, it should be accessible through Emacs.

> And, again, Melpa is accessible through Emacs: the entire content of
> the website is served on an API which is fully supported by Emacs
> (list-packages).
> 
> > This site requires JavaScript to function.
> 
> At least that's pretty explicit.

And how that can be good, we speak of Emacs, not of whatever
else. People do use Internet through Emacs.

> > JavaScript license information
> 
> And they went through the trouble of using only free javascript for
> the website (except for the, admittedly, unnecessary twitter feed and
> analytics, which a lot of users will block with their adblocker or
> LibreJS).

Which makes the MELPA website non-free website, not recommended for
freedom lovers.