Re: more on anything.el inclusion

[Thierry Volpiatto]

Hope my private mail is clear enough.
I say no more here as i don't want to pollute this mailing list.

MON KEY <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:47:40 -0500 Ted Zlatanov wrote:
>> Does this mean you'd rather not include anything.el in Emacs?
>>
>> My view is that the anything.el system, separated from the Emacs
>> completion mechanism, has significant freedom with plugins and
>
> This freedom isn't of itself a good thing and could just as well serve
> as a potential source confusion/bugs/conflict.
>
> AFAIK anything is currently maintained by a cadre of users and the
> `freedom' that the anything interface provides has/can created
> conflicts w/re implementation details.
>
> Were anything.el to be included in Emacs who would be the lead point
> of contact?
>
> IMHO of the anything cadre Thierry is prob. the capable person, though
> I imagine nominating him as such could be a bone of contention other
> of the existing contributors.
>
> This being said, it likewise isn't at all clear how/why the Anything
> featureset is different from or somehow 'better than' the Icicles
> features Drew Adams' has provided and maintained for many years
> now. Indeed, IIUC there is already some overlap between the two API's
> because there a not insignificant degree of functionality overlap. It
> would seem a real shame (and prob. an insulting to Drew) to consider
> inclusion of Anything without an honest discussion of inclusion of
> Icicles as well.
>
> Maybe Icicles and Antyhing code/features could/should be merged before
> inclusion in Emacs.
>
> FTR I use neither Anything nor Icicles and couldn't endorse either
> from experience.  However, I have watched the progress of their
> respective development with interest.
>
>> functionality.  So improving the completion mechanism is not the
>> same as what anything.el can provide for Emacs users.
>
> Why should it be?
> What Stephan proposes is absolutely TRT for users such as myself who
> _could/should_ benefit from the features and proven design concepts
> which both Anything and Icicles seem to extend to their current
> adoptees. Why shouldn't we all benefit from an abstracted meta-level
> API?
>
> It is wrongheaded to arbitrarily incorporate external packages which
> duplicate existing core behaviour/features such that the duplication
> of the new (however useful) is better positioned to becomes the norm
> simply by virtue of the pain imposed on emacs-devels to retrofit a
> core API after the fact.
>
> IOW lets say anything.el were to be included in Emacs and it became so
> widely adopted that it was deemed worthwhile to attempt a retroactive
> metaleval API (including C primitives). Were Stefan or some other
> devel to endeavor implementation of such an API they might be hard
> pressed to maintain backwards compatibility with the existing
> anything.el procedures and prob. alienate the primary anything.el user
> base to boot.
>
>> Ted
>
> --
> /s_P\
>
>

-- 
Thierry Volpiatto
Gpg key: http://pgp.mit.edu/