Re: [VETO] Support package-prefix and fix mail-locking in configure

>>>>> "Ben" == Ben Wing <[email protected]> writes:

    Ben> Although maybe no one has asked for this kind of stuff, I
    Ben> think that's because most people just give up before trying
    Ben> to install packages themselves since it's too complicated and
    Ben> not well documented.  I have a feeling this turns off a fair
    Ben> number of people, who may just go use GNU Emacs because
    Ben> everything comes with it automatically.

It's possible, of course, but actually I've never seen that said, at
least not seriously.  I think we should worry about doing it right
because it simplifies other things _we_ want to do, not because users
are going to thank us for saving their bandwidth or something.

I suspect we'd solve many of our "what is this SUMO thing" problems by
providing a netinstall of 21.5 --with-mule!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rationale:

Take this character Xah Lee on c.e.x.  He used to use XEmacs, then he
switched to GNU Emacs.  He was pleasantly surprised (out loud,
cross-posted to c.e and c.e.x---I think he's a troll, really) at all
the stuff that's in GNU Emacs, then immediately started bitching about
the features he misses from XEmacs, including several packages that
are in the SUMOs.

Really, people tend to be disappointed with GNU Emacs, to the extent
where David Kastrup is regularly deprecating use of stable GNU Emacsen
on c.e.x (and often crossposted to c.e).  OTOH, CVS Emacs was
regularly delivering DOAs (on some platform in some config; truly
busted commits are of course very rare) as late as last September, so
people respond to David with "Yah, raaaaaight."

Except for Windows people (and ex-Windows people moving to Unix), I've
really not seen very many complaints on the MLs or c.e.x, and in the
last two years none, about installing the SUMOs.  And for the Windows
"just give me an editor" types, the real answer should be "provide a
netinstall of 21.5 --with-mule".  The people who build XEmacs because
they _want_ to don't have problems; the people who have problems are
generally building 21.5 because they need Mule.

You may be seeing complaints from elsewhere, though.


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