Re: Representation of the Emacs userbase on emacs-devel

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: philipk@posteo.net, rms@gnu.org, john@yates-sheets.org,
>  danflscr@gmail.com, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2021 04:32:50 +0300
> 
> On 03.09.2021 15:26, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > We are, I hope, interested mainly in making Emacs evolve and adapt to
> > the changing times and preferences.  I consider the way of introducing
> > changes as optional first to be a better way towards that goal,
> > including the goal to change the defaults.  And I explained in so many
> > words why and how.  How is that side-stepping the issue at hand?
> 
> The goals of having Emacs "evolve and adapt" and having it stay the same 
> are inherently at odds.

Of course.  But Emacs doesn't "stay the same", at least not in the
literal meaning of the word.  So I still don't understand what are you
trying to say here.

> > Show me a project where things are different, where the lead
> > developers cannot say "I don't like" (with arguments, which you forget
> > to mention, or prefer to dismiss or disregard, but they are still
> > there), and that's it.  This is how Free Software projects are being
> > developed, at least IME.  Emacs is not an outlier, it's right there in
> > the mainstream.
> 
> You might as well have said "show me a project where the leaders don't 
> make decisions".

Exactly.

> So what? We can still question the logic in said decisions.

The decisions can be questioned and scrutinized, of course.  But you
questioned the method of making those decisions, and that was what I
responded to.

> >>> IME, at least on
> >>> my daytime job, source code produced by people these days with popular
> >>> IDEs (not Emacs) includes TABs.
> >>
> >> Does it include tabs in the same fashion as what is produced by Emacs?
> >> Which actually mixes tabs and spaces.
> > 
> > Why does it matter?  If we'd make the default use only TABs, would you
> > agree then?
> 
> You would not be able to -- it would be just as breaking, and it would 
> require even more changes, including various major modes. Like 
> synchronizing tab-width and the *-indent-level variables.
> 
> But it would make more sense, at least.

So who dodges the questions now?

> It does matter if you are at all interested in the current popular 
> practices around tabs vs spaces (meaning being interested in what people 
> ultimately want: Emacs users generally don't get to choose the current 
> project style at the workplace).

We have enough customization variables to fit any style out there, I
think.  Changing the defaults according to the current average fashion
out there makes very little sense in a program as stable as Emacs is
supposed to be.

> When we look at the polls about indentation style preference (where 
> "tabs" can be as high as ~30% for certain languages), they don't prefer 
> the kind of tab-based indentation that Emacs does. Which really means we 
> only satisfy some tiny fraction of the users OOTB in any language.

Says you.