Re: split screen horizontally into three equally spaced sections

[Lennart Borgman]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 9:04 PM, Nikolaj Schumacher <me@nschum.de> wrote:
> "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> when it comes to more complex things then I definitively prefer
>> bundling. Remember that complexity tends to grow exponentially with the
>> number of involved things.
>
> Exactly.  If two things are tied-together, there are more things
> involved.  If they are separate, complexity is actually reduced.

I think you deliberately are trying to hide my point ;-)

Yes, you are right in a sense, but my point is that you reduce
complexity by binding things together. When you bundle elisp libraries
you know which versions are included and thus reduce complexity since
the version dimension is fixed.


> We're talking about slightly different things, I think.  When there are
> real dependencies, I don't mind packaging.  It's a sane choice in
> absence of package management.  But many packages have artificial
> dependencies that wouldn't have to exist.

I do some cleanup on that whenever I have time ... ;-)


> I don't know about your package, so I don't want to make any
> assumptions.  But, for example, ECB can only reasonably used with the
> included (brain-dead) window management.  There is no way to just use
> the (excellent) class browser.  That's a serious restriction...

I do not know ECB, but I think you should look a bit closer if you
think the window management is brain-dead. I think Eric has struggled
quite a lot with the somewhat limited window management capabilities
that are available currently in Emacs.

This has been discussed on the developers list. If you are willing to
work with this I think there are still things to be done. Please look
in the archive.

You might be right that the coupling window-management/cloase browser
is unnecessary, I don't know. But I know that Eric has made some
rather silent complaints that he is doing most of the work on CEDET et
al himself. So there is room for you there as well!

> It seems that winsize is optional, as well as separately usable.  I don't
> mind that they're in the same zip file.  I just think that bundling
> generally increases the risk that they needlessly get tangled together.
> I hope that doesn't happen.

It happens all the time when you are in a hurry. It also happens when
primitives you need are not available in Emacs. Getting them into
Emacs often takes a long time because of the limited number of
developers. While waiting for that things must be bundled (or you have
to double the code which is much, much worse).

To sum it up: Most of the time what people think is bad bundling is
more a lack of understanding in the beholder.

And of course a lack of time on both sides. The hard thing is to find
reasonable ways to work with the limited resources we have. I have
found that some bundling is often an effective way.


> regards,
> Nikolaj Schumacher
>