[AUCTeX-devel] Re: Changes in font locking

[David Kastrup]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

> Reiner Steib writes:
>
>  > And these are only quotes from the one of the (three years old)
>  > thread related to `with-syntax-table'.
>
> And from only one developer.  (I am not XEmacs's counterpart to rms,
> you know.)  Which is precisely why they're not particularly relevant
> to the general stance of XEmacs, only to *this* developer's response
> to *this* one bug.
>
>  > Not exactly encouraging in my book.
>
> For *this* bug, you were *supposed* to be discouraged.  I've now said
> at least four times that *I* won't fix *this* bug,

I think you are confusing the XEmacs developer list with your personal
mail account.  If you are asking people to go away on the developer
list and discourage them from posting _there_, you are not merely
addressing your personal priorities concerning a bug, but are very
effectively preventing others from addressing them.

And that is not even taking into account that you are the project
leader.  If the project leader on the project developer lists tells
people to go away with their bug report, then nobody else will take
them up.

Turning away any report you feel not capable of addressing yourself is
overkill.

And yet you claim that this work of discouraging people to contribute
is much more important for you as a project leader than fixing bugs.

Not replying at all to such reports would do a better job for XEmacs
than what you do: at least then others might feel compelled to pick up
the problem.

> If you think what I do and say significantly affect the XEmacs code
> base, well, I guess I have to admit I'm flattered---but you're
> wrong.

It significantly affects its stagnation AFAICS.

> I'm no superprogrammer; I can make a perceptible difference only
> over years.  Working on your bug would only mean I can't work on
> something else.  And if what I say about fixing any given bug
> matters, it's only because the other core developers are happy to
> have cover as they focus on the issues they consider important.

I don't think you are doing your project much of a favor by "covering"
for them in that manner.

> In general, we do read all reports, we fix the bugs we can, and we
> refuse to promise to fix bugs that we don't have the resources to
> fix.

"refuse to promise" would be fine.  But you rather "promise to
refuse".

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum