Re: Should we move 20.x related stuff out of NEWS ?

[Alan Mackenzie]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Juri Linkov wrote:

>I must say that having news for old releases in one file is very
>inconvenient.  For example, isearching it for some newest feature, the
>user can't see if the string that isearch displays is in the latest
>version or in one of older versions!

A beginning user will have this problem.  An experienced user will know
to type C-c C-u, or at the very least C-h m to find the appropriate
command.

>Ideally, NEWS should have a version number in its extension:

>NEWS.20.1
>NEWS.20.2
>NEWS.20.3
>NEWS.20.4
>NEWS.20.5
>NEWS.20.6
>NEWS.20.7
>NEWS.21.1
>NEWS.21.2
>NEWS.21.3
>NEWS.21.4

>If having too many files is undesirable, then files for only _major_
>releases could be created, with the NEWS file containing news for the
>latest _minor_ release:

>NEWS      -- news for 21.4
>NEWS.21   -- news for 21.1, 21.2, 21.3
>NEWS.20   -- news for all 20.*

I disagree with Juri entirely here.  As a package developer, I'll often
want to ask a question like "What's the earliest Emacs version that
supports syntax-table text properties?", and a quick "C-h n C-s",
followed up with a few "C-c C-u"s finds it easily enough.

If NEWS were to be split up as described, I'd have to formulate a grep
command.  [Aside:  Emacs facilities for searching through several files
seem strangely poor.]

CC Mode is only just on the point of not supporting 19.34 any more.  It
will carry on supporting 20.x for some years to come.  For this reason,
I'd prefer NEWS to carry on carrying 20.x entries.

It all boils down to the question, what is NEWS for, and whom is it for?
At the top of the file it says "history of user-visible changes".  To me,
a "user" is somebody who's using Emacs to edit files (etc.), but when she
starts writing packages, becomes something more than a user.

"history of user-visible changes" doesn't seem to be an accurate
discription of NEWS any more.  For the last major release, Emacs 21.1,
user-visible changes occupy 2170 lines, "user-invisible"
("hacker-visible?") changes occupy 2196 lines.  Maybe an extract of NEWS
containing only user-visible changes would be a good thing.

>Juri Linkov

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
address@hidden