21.0 hassles

Well, I'm embarrased. As the person guilty of contributing the initial packaging code, I found it rather difficult to actually use the stuff. First, I think the INSTALL file is too complicated. Let's cover the simple (and typical) cases first and then bury the user with details later. It needs to be more "cookbook" instead of "textbook" (example below). Maybe it could get organized as some web pages that can narrow the configuration down to what the user has selected. Next, it is really difficult to figure out what lisp files need to be downloaded and where they go. Yes, SUMO is the way to go for 21.0 but that needs to be clearer in the installation files. The install step didn't create the packages directory -- which would then give me errors during installation of packages. For whatever reason, using the menus to select a bunch of packages Options ==> Customize ==> Emacs ==> Packages Even after selecting them, then Options ==> Update Packages didn't do anything. The package descriptive text needs to be longer. What are "oa", "os", "wp" (yes, _I_ know). Why would I want to get "Miscellaneous support for editing text files"? If I don't download the "Time Package" does that mean XEmacs won't display the time and date on the modeline? Following is an example of what I mean by simplified INSTALL instructions. 1. Download the distribution (typically from ftp.xemacs.org:/pub/xemacs/beta/xemacs-21.0) xemacs-21.0-b54.tar.gz xemacs-21.0-b54-elc.tar.gz xemacs-21.0-b54-info.tar.gz 2. Download some important lisp files: xemacs-sumo-19980811-nomule.tar.gz [or from packages/binary-files] xemacs-base-1.23-pkg.tar.gz efs-1.08-pkg.tar.gz mail-lib-1.16-pkg.tar.gz 3. Extract the sources: gzip -dc xemacs-21.0-b54.tar.gz | tar xf - gzip -dc xemacs-21.0-b54-elc.tar.gz | tar xf - gzip -dc xemacs-21.0-b54-info.tar.gz | tar xf - 4. Configure and build (Note: read further for options; this covers 90% of systems): cd xemacs-21.0-b54 ./configure make 5. Test src/xemacs 6. Install basic xemacs (this and the following steps may require root access): make install 7. Install basic packages (may need root access): cd <prefix>/lib/xemacs-21.0 mkdir packages cd packages gzip -dc <download>/xemacs-base-1.23-pgk.tar.gz gzip -dc <download>/efs-1.08-pkg.tar.gz gzip -dc <download>/mail-lib-1.16-pkg.tar.gz 8. Select more packages (may need root access): xemacs Options ==> Customize ==> Emacs ==> Packages ==> Packages... 9. Install packages (may need root access): Options ==> Customize ==> Update Packages --pete