wmperry(a)aventail.com (William M. Perry) writes:
> > > > Module support is **dangerous**. Beware!
> > >
> > > So is executing elisp. :)
> >
> > That's not what I meant. I'm not a security freak.
> >
> > What I meant was that announcing module support has potentially
> > far-reaching ramifications that we don't really appreciate at this time.
>
> Oh, you mean including it in the 21.0 release announcement? Yeah,
> that would be bad, considering the doc strings get lost, there is no
> support for autoloading them, etc, etc. That's the stuff I want to
> hack on for 21.1 as soon as we fork the tree.
Close, but no cigar! :-)
What I meant was that our abstraction layer line between "interface"
and "implementation" is currently drawn somewhere around C<->elisp
distinction (with the exception of some code in lisp/ that can also be
consider "implementation"). Specifically, this means that we can play
around with the C code as much as we like, and noone will get burnt.
Now, if we announce the modules support for 21.1, we'll have to make
it damn sure that we know *exactly* what we're doing. Suddenly, when
making changes to XEmacs, we'll have to consider not only the
compatibility with old Lisp code, but the compatibility with old C
code.
We'll also have to make the same interface<->implementation
distinction within the C code, and somehow announce which parts of the
interface are cast in stone, and which are liable to change.
I don't think XEmacs C code is ready for this sort of thing.
--
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
Try to use "ad nauseam" at least once per flame. It doesn't mean
anything; but it gives that polished feel to your postings.