Re: The future of XEmacs

I understand the need for updated packages that help people work in different ways. There are also things within XEmacs that need updating. I have 2 things that poke at me when I am working within XEmacs. First is that some features are in the documentation, but do not actually exist when you go to program them. An example is in dialogs, that only 1 of 4 types of dialog boxes that are in the documentation actually exist in code. You can call the function name from your lisp code, and it says "not implemented". There are other examples of this too. Second is that features that exist in the manuals and exist in the program, but you cannot use them in code and submit it for inclusion in XEmacs because that feature doesn't exist in the previous stable version (21.4) (and never will). An example is when I tried to implement a behavior, which is in the manual, and the code is there--it works. But is not compatible with a 10 year old previous version. There are other places where behaviors can be implemented to good effect, in the menu system, that would solve some usability problems that some users report, but they cannot be used at this time. An example: it is a way to implement (and turn off) CUA provisions (a "new" menu item, and similarly a "close" menu item for example), while keeping the entire rest of the menu intact, so anyone who wants the CUA items can turn on a behavior, and the rest can leave it off, and no harm done. The real problem is no body or no thing, except the distribution cycle has stretched to over 10 years old now, and it forces everybody to write code (to be submitted to XEmacs) that doesn't use the new features of 21.5. If I recall correctly, behaviors existed 10 years ago, but still cannot be used. What obstacles are in the way of incrementing the version number of a stable release so we can use new features? Steve Mitchell Forgive me if I have some terminology of version numbers or the number of years wrong here, I think it has actually been 11 years since behaviors were implemented, going by the date on the file. _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta