Re: [Orgmode] Emacs 21.4.1 support

[Dave Täht]

tycho garen <address@hidden> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 12:59:53PM -0600, Dave Täht wrote:
>> "Jing Su @ Gmail" <address@hidden> writes:
>> >
>> > I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since
>> > RHEL is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on
>> > servers, it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such
>> > industrial standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ). System
>> > administrators will take risk to install unofficial org-mode, but most
>> > of them won't risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks, for a
>> > newer but unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.
>> >
>> 
>> No, to heck with that. Most serious users of emacs end up compiling
>> their own release, at least until recently, because the official
>> releases were so out of date. I would suggest pulling current rpms from
>> fedora (maybe they have the equivalent of emacs-snapshot?) And tying
>> those on rhel.
>
> A couple of things. Most significantly, I think it's important to
> avoid being so blase about supporting this subset of users,
> particularly when the answers--with a little bit of digging--are
> pretty simple. Having said that, there's a bunch of stuff that
> probably won't work, I would offer a number of other possible
> solution. 

You are right, but I have found the default install of emacs to be so
lame on so many distros for so long that I can understand why people
have flocked to other editors. 

Take, for example, the fact that no distro that I know of installs an
emacs compatible ansi-term entry in terminfo by default. (Couple that
with the fact that no terminal emulator I have found in emacs works as
good as the equivalent in xterm, gnome-terminal, etc. It's really
bugging me at the moment, actually, I'd really like to use ansi-term but
every time I try it ends up spewing data all on the same line after a
while. I swear I had it working well for a few days with 23.1 but then I
went back to emacs-snapshot because I didn't want to build everything
Emacs-snapshot did for me)

Multiply by the huge number of packages required to make emacs
competitive with eclipse, like semantic. Stir in missing-by-default
emacs modes like Python mode.

Compare with the bundled supported moduls of vim for system
administration and basic programming tasks. Simmer,
then run away.

Org is the first truly compelling application that emacs has had in years.

>
> First, I'd look at EPEL, rather than Fedora as a source for RHEL
> packages of more recent emacsen to use. If you can get a version of
> emacs 22.(something) there's a version of org-mode included with that
> version. So a little hop should be enough to get you basic
> functionality. 
>

Cool, I wasn't aware of that.

> If you're running on servers, as it sounds like you are, getting
> graphical support for all the new things that have happened in the
> last two version of emacs, might be easier. So that while a lot of
> things have changed in emacs in the last four years, the subset of
> things in emacs that have changed in the terminal mode, might be
> somewhat smaller. And really since org-mode is mostly compatible with
> emacs22 still (right?), the barrier might be even lower than many
> people think, particularly if you're not going for *full
> functionality*. 

That was the point I tried to make earlier, but wasn't clear. I rarely run
emacs on the server at all, preferring to use tramp to access files
elsewhere. (And things like pdsh, but I digress)

>
> Having said that, how much emacs hacekry do people do on servers. Even
> though I have emacs23-nox installed on my server, I must say that most
> of my text-file-editing on the server happens in Zile, which is
> just emacs-like enough for me to avoid pulling my hair out, but very
> small/lightweight. So I guess after all of that I'm not sure that I
> see the use-case you propose.
>
> As an aside, I think OS X ships with emacs21, so it's not just RHEL,

I've seen that version on a mac. It's sadly deficient. 

Every serious emacs user on a mac I know immediately installed aquamacs or a
more modern gnu emacs.

The unserious users just went away.

> but I think that more people are willing to tinker with OS X than they
> are willing to tinker with RHEL. But, if someone is willing to package

Heh. RHEL is there to be an OS you don't worry about, ever, but don't
use for anything new and interesting. It has a valid role in life but is
currently awfully long in the tooth.

> (or use the OpenSuSE build process) to make org-mode/emacs23 packages
> for RHEL I think sysadmins might be more willing to give it a try,
> given the wonders of (quasi)modern package management. 


>
> Cheers,
> tycho

-- 
Dave Taht
http://the-edge.blogspot.com