Re: XEmacs and its multiuser roots (was Re: change \C-m binding to newline-and-indent)
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull(a)sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> writes:
>>>>> "HS" == Holger Schauer
<schauer(a)coling.uni-freiburg.de> writes:
>>>>"sb" == SL Baur schrieb am 06 Apr 1999 03:59:30 -0700:
sb> The XEmacs user base has changed dramatically over the last
sb> three years in favor of systems that are typically
sb> single-user.
HS> How do you know ?
I'm sure that Steve meant that the majority of users do so on
single-user systems, as you interpret his statement. Of course that's
open to question. But I think that you cannot question that the trend
is toward single-user installations, even if they do not dominate yet.
(snip)
The Win95 port introduces an interesting new problem, since
most users have write privileges on the system directories. Is that
really such a problem? Win95 (and WinNT for that matter in my limited
experience) are basically single-user systems. If you go to the
trouble making NT into a true multi-user system, then presumably you
protect the system directories from J. R. Ewser; ditto shared volumes
containing system software. Sysadmins who care and have the smarts to
enforce it will use some such system. Then they can take care of
J. R. Powawoozer who installs his own packages using the strategies
above.
Turning WinNT into a true multi-user system is quite difficult. Many
issues have not yet been cleaned up. For instance, does XEmacs cass
either tmpname() or tmpfile()? The standard VC++ library provides
versions of these routines that put your temporary files in the *root*
directory of the *current* drive -- with no way to override this. A
secure multi-user system will not give the average user write
permissions on C:\.
Darron Shaffer