Re: [Fabrice Popineau] Re: Need some bug/version info
David Kastrup <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.emacs.auc-tex |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Ralf Angeli <[email protected]> writes: > * David Kastrup (2005-02-05) writes: > >> Ralf Angeli <[email protected]> writes: >> >>> After that the syntactic pass should pick up the syntax properties >>> and fontify the indicated regions. This is done by the function >>> `font-lock-fontify-syntactically-region'. But this function does >>> not seem to find the syntax properties. It uses >>> `parse-partial-sexp' and all sorts of checking on the resulting >>> states which I don't understand. >> >> It appears obvious that it has been a mistake of mine not to mention >> in the release notes for AUCTeX that it generally appears to be a bad >> idea to use XEmacs with AUCTeX if you can avoid it. > > I hope this is not a conclusion based on my current disability to > debug XEmacs code. If the bug had been in Emacs instead of XEmacs I > would have gotten stuck at the same place in the code. If the bug had been in Emacs instead of XEmacs, a) we would have had people reporting it during testing b) it would have likely occured in the version of Emacs you are usually working with c) even when it occurs just with Emacs-21.3, this is much closer to the Emacs CVS code base than XEmacs d) if it had indeed been an Emacs bug or something hard to understand, I consider the chances of getting a good fix from the Emacs developers slightly better. Or at least less exasperating for me. On the downside, until a bug fix makes it into a stable release, Emacs takes much longer. [Stuff proving my point that we are not there yet WRT XEmacs] I had been writing up the following patch, and I suppose that it will be more or less what we would be pointing people to when the question comes up. Comments? I have not mentioned XEmacs 21.4.16 here since that release has been officially pulled and the respective tarballs removed. Depending on just how effective this measure proves and on when we are going to have the next release of the FAQ, it might still be worth mentioning. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
(unnamed)
(text/x-patch, 2.2 KB)
--- faq.texi 13 Aug 2004 00:45:14 +0200 1.3
+++ faq.texi 06 Feb 2005 16:39:11 +0100
@@ -11,10 +11,32 @@
@item
What versions of Emacs and XEmacs are supported?
-@AUCTeX{} was tested with Emacs 21 and XEmacs 21.4.15. Older versions may
-work but are unsupported. Older versions of XEmacs might possibly made
-to work by updating the @file{xemacs-base} package through the XEmacs
-package system.
+@AUCTeX{} was tested with @w{Emacs 21} and @w{XEmacs 21.4.15}. Older
+versions may work but are unsupported. Older versions of XEmacs might
+possibly made to work by updating the @file{xemacs-base} package through
+the XEmacs package system. If you are looking for a recommendation, it
+would appear that the smoothest working platform on all operating
+systems at the current point of time would be @w{Emacs 21.4}. At the
+time of this writing, however, it has not been released and is still
+under development. The quality of the development version is quite
+solid, so we recommend giving it a try. With a developer version, of
+course, you have to be prepared to update in case you managed to get
+your snapshot at a bad time. The second best choice would be the latest
+released @w{Emacs 21.3}. However, Unicode support is less good, there
+is no version for the popular GTK toolkit, and the native versions for
+Windows and MacOS don't offer toolbar and @previewlatex{} support.
+
+Our success with XEmacs has been less than convincing. Under the
+Windows operating system, nominally the only option for a released,
+stable Emacs variant supporting toolbars and @previewlatex{} would be
+@{XEmacs 21.4}. However, code for core functionality like formatting
+and syntax highlighting tends to be different and often older than even
+@w{Emacs 21.3}, and Unicode support as delivered is problematic at best,
+missing on Windows. Both @AUCTeX{} and XEmacs developers don't hear
+much from active users of the combination. Partly for that reason,
+problems tend to go unnoticed for long amounts of time and are often
+found, if at all, after releases. No experiences or recommendations can
+be given for beta or developer versions of XEmacs.
@item
Why doesn't the completion or multifile stuff work?