XAE-1.0beta7

Michel Goossens writes:
 > Paul, hello,
 > 
 > It is really great to see a new (beta) version of xae, but as I have
 > already the latest greatest of Norm's stylesheets, of psgmls emacs macros
 > and Mike Kay's saxon installed, it would be nice if there were simple
 > hooks (or an explanation) how I could make your emacs setup use my 
 > already installed components, (this would save me a few MBytes of space).
 > Of course it is possible that you rely on a version specific API to one of
 > those packages, in which case you could document this, but in general a
 > layered approach (as opposed to a black-box "install everything" setup)
 > would be much appreciated (for the more-expert-type :+}). Thanks. m
 > 
 > PS. I _did_ spend quite some time with an emacs lisp specialist trying
 >     to back engineer/hack your macros so that they refer to my installed 
 >     versions, but we were only successful up to a point(e.g., we did not
 >     succeed in getting the saxon execution from the menu going)
 > PPS. xae _is_ great since it includes most of whatis needed.

Hi Michel,

I have deliberately taken a single-download approach with the XAE.
This is based on years of experience with supporting the Java
Development Environment (JDEE), which I also authored and which
requires downloading, unzipping, and installing about 10 separate Lisp
and Java packages from different places around the Internet. The JDEE
list receives an unending stream of messages from people with setup
difficulties. Pleas for a single-download of the JDEE are
frequent. Debugging installation and setup problems with the JDEE is
a nightmare because you never know where the customer has put the
downloaded packages or even if they have installed the correct
versions. It is not only novices that have problems but experts
too. Experts, for example, frequently ignore the release notes
and hence fail to notice that the latest JDEE release requires 
a later version of a package they've already installed and hence
neglect to download it. The result is a waste of their time and
mine. With the XAE, in contrast, there is virtually no traffic
relating to setup problems. I'd like to keep it that way. 

- Paul

P.S. I am copying this reply to the XAE list in case others
are wondering about this issue..

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