Re: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

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>
>   > Of course, I completely understand and agre that  Emacs should
>   > prioritize free systems, but in case of resource avialable why not use
>   > it?
>
> Depending on what resource it is, and how it would be used, there may
> or may not be a reason not to use it.
Well, yes of course like with everything.

>   > do believe if Elisp
>   > via Emacs let one do some cool visual stuff, like programming some
>   > graphics, and doing drawing in the editor would make it more useful and
>   > more efficient. Also I see it as a one brick in making Emacs more
>   > popular. I personally think it would be super cool to see Emacs do 3D
>   > with Elisp,
>
> Would this be a feature that works only if there is nonfree software
> in your system load?
No.

OpenGL implementation can be completely software based, or just
partially hardware accelerated. Such case is Mesa which is at least open
source, how much free it is I don't know, I am not so knowledgable about
interpretting licenses. 

> Implementing such a feature would turn Emacs into an inducement for
> people to choose systems with nonfree software in them.  We must not
> do that!  So we cannot include such a feature.
People still choose such hardware, regardless of Emacs runing on them or
not; and Emacs do run on them. It is also implicitly linked to a
proprietary driver if one is present via OS and windowing system. I just
think it would be very useful to people if they could use Elisp as they
use Python today, since I think Lisp is nicer language to work with.

> In other words, we must have a policy of not enhancing nonfree software.
Yes, I agree with you on that one definitely. But we would like to
enhance Emacs, not other non-free software.

> However, the thinkpagds that we can use do have some acceleration.
> If your feature works usably on an X200 or T400 type machine,
> then it is ok.
I have hard time to imagine a piece of machinery made since 2000 without
something proprietary, but I believe you guys looked up that. I don't
know myself; I don't have access to one.