Re: address@hidden: Drew Adams's elisp libraries]

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> Would anyone like to look at some of his libraries to find things
> that might be worth installing in Emacs?

I recall Drew posting this code on gnu.emacs.sources some time ago,
and most of it was quite small additions to existing packages - some
are quite nice - others I didn't like personally.

However, a lot of the code is also depending on other parts of the
code (some of the changes seem to be tweaks which are only needed to
use Drew's own functions rather than standard functions), so going
through the files is somewhat tedious.

My suggestion is that we make a new directory under CVS for things
(like this) to be considered for inclusion at some point - I suggest
`pending' as the name of the directory.

You could then add Drew's files there, and - as we go through the
files - makeChangeLog entries which will list our decision on those
(and other) files, e.g.

        * thingatpt.el+: Removed file
        (...): Added to thingatpt.el
        (...): Rejected because ...

I.e. once we are done with a file of `pending' changes, the file is
removed from CVS (ie. marked dead), and the ChangeLog will tell us
what parts were used or rejected.


At random, I looked at a few of the posted files:

compile.el-
Defines additional key bindings in minor-compilation-mode.
I think Kai started doing something similar, while Richard
didn't want such bindings at all.

compile.el+
Adds a separate face for mouse-over and does highlighting
of grep matches which seems ok.  Does other things which
are less obvious.

files.el+
It redefines switch-to-buffer-other-window/-frame to read the
buffer name using `read-buffer' rather than the interactive "B"
method.  I don't see how this can make a difference !?

highlight.el
Allows you to highlight a certain regexp in the buffer.
Not really necessary on its own, as the new isearch
highlight of all matches does something similar.

icomplete.el+
Adds faces to choices and a few minor tweaks to the 
operation which seems reasonable.

thingatpt.el+
Seems to be reasonable enhancements.

wimpy-del.el
An alternative to kill-region which requires confirmation
when deleting a region larger than a customized limit.
It also has the ability to remove a completion if the
last command was 'complete.
I don't see why this is needed when we have UNDO, but
others might disagree.