Re: Changes in font locking

David Kastrup writes: We have taken notice; we simply haven't fixed it, due to other claims on developer time. It's been *tabled*, with no date set for continuance. That is very different from "ignoring". To contrast "ignoring" with "report in civil manner" is to make an implicit claim that we "owe" you something, simply because you report it. Sorry; we're *all volunteers*, and quite time-constrained. We can't even muster a Google Summer of Code mentor. Not at all. I don't blame you for *not looking*, I object to you *attacking me* for not looking, when you make the same kind of decision based on your own constraints. All I intended was to point out that it would have been equally easy for you to look at Emacs history, because it happens that in this case that was the relevant place to look. Nice own-troll! No, we don't have better things to do than fix bugs; we just have better things to do than fix *this* bug. YHBT HAND. Really, if XEmacs were so wonderful that the obvious bug to fix is the with-syntax-table bug, you would be out collecting assignments for it so that you could use it in good conscience. Who am I to judge others' reasons? I only judge my own: I have no personal reason to care about this bug. It's not a quality issue. If I fixed currently known bugs 24 hours a day, I could probably go 10 years without needing to look at with-syntax-table. People who *do* care *can* make the effort, and in this case I decided I would leave it to them. Who knows why volunteers do what they do? If they want to do it, they will. Whether they use XEmacs or not makes no matter. It's actually very sad, because I should have a personal reason. I respect and *like* you, David, though I rarely have the opportunity to express that. Your bug reports *should* be such a chance. Because I find your reporting style offensive, they're not, and realistically, it's better for XEmacs if I table them -- if taking offense is a bug in me, it's better for XEmacs that I don't fix it. :-( There are lots of people who can fix the XEmacs bugs just as well as I can. There are many other things that I should do *first*. What do you think my consistent recommendation that you declare that "XEmacs is not supported" is based on? A hate for XEmacs? Of course I'm concerned. But I refuse to adopt your approach of berating the people who sometimes do contribute when they don't give my requests priority over their own plans. I wish you'd stop attributing motivation to me. And I wish just as much you'd stop assuming I attribute motivation to you. It's against my religion. I make no claim that you made claims about the history of XEmacs code; at least on auctex-devel, I'm sure that the majority would agree with my assessment that you personally are unlikely to make them, it's not your style. My claim is that you denied that the copy-syntax-table call was in Emacs 21, which is true. <85ird4lrr2.fsf(a)lola.goethe.zz&gt; You can say "the word I used was 'doubt'", but the important thing is that's enough to *strongly* discourage me from making the effort. I don't know if Ralf "felt" the same; I'm glad he went ahead and did it. "Chastisement" it is not; I don't judge you for making the claims. I simply need to point them out, because they're relevant to my acts. I respect your judgment and knowledge of Emacs internals, and if you say it's not there, even with some level of doubt, I'm not going to waste time looking. But the Emacs (no "X"!) history was the crucial datum! Note, this is not *blame*, I simply point out that your comments *could* have led to continued impasse. You clearly didn't intend to look, I was discouraged from looking. It's due to raw good fortune (and of course, Ralf's good will!) that somebody did look, and the whole thing could be resolved with the amount of effort I'm willing to make. You could say "Steve, you put far more effort into this flame fest than it would have taken to do the research." And that would be correct, but very shortsighted. To the extent that I accept responsibility for XEmacs development, the *last* thing *I* should be doing is fixing bugs. IMO, right now the right answer for XEmacs 21.5 for bugs of this level of importance is "WONTFIX". We are *not* in prerelease mode. We have big problems that should be fixed before thinking about fixing this kind of bug. We can hope that they'll get fix en passant to some sync or refactoring, but to put in core developer effort on fixing minor bugs is too expensive to encourage. Rather, I reluctantly tell 3rd party library developers to stop breaking their heads on XEmacs bugs. You know that very well; I probably tell you that about once every six weeks. Other core developers probably feel differently (Aidan Kehoe, for one likely candidate), but their own time constraints evidently prevent them from "doing" much about it. I take that as confirmation of my approach. Thus this thread of hot-headed apologia. _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta