rms@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) (03/22/91)
I have not worked on Emacs 19 myself since almost two years ago; I haven't had time. Unfortunately, there has been turnover in the people working on it. Dealing with Unipress's threats set things back a few months also. Projects slip, and it's not much use berating people for the speed of their progress. At least there is steady progress now. I was certainly mistaken when I predicted when Emacs 19 would be available. But I can't unsend that message now. All I can do is admit that it turned out to be wrong.
jla@LUCID.COM (Joseph Arceneaux) (03/22/91)
Things which have delayed version 19 include changes in personnel, leaves of abscence, the Unipress threats, and an iterative process of trying and then throwing out some features. Feedback from Epoch users was involved in this last, and has, positively I believe, influenced aspects of version 19. The 1988 message about release in "6 to 9 months" was long before I began work on 19, so such an early version would have been missing some features that many users would like, such as working under X11. It is certainly regrettable to have made any promises about release dates, and as far as I am concerned I can only attribute this to my weakness before severe insistence from various groups of users. Rather than make such an error again, I will go back to work.
aks%anywhere@HUB.UCSB.EDU (Alan Stebbens) (03/22/91)
> Feedback from Epoch users was involved in this last, and has, > positively I believe, influenced aspects of version 19. This prompts me to ask: 1. What features will Emacs 19 have, especially as compared with Epoch 3.2? I hear so much about how nice Epoch is on an X display, compared to "standard" Emacs. 2. >>Approximately<< when will Emacs 19 be out? I ask these questions, not to inveigle a firm committment date, but to help me determine whether I should port Epoch 3.2 to my RS6000/AIX3.1 and use it for a while, or would I be better off waiting for the fabled Emacs 19. I don't want to spend the effort doing the former if the latter will be ready within a time frame small enough to make me regret it. So, is there any possibility of getting Emacs 19 out before, say, October? Alan PS: That's October 1991 :^)
aks%anywhere@HUB.UCSB.EDU (Alan Stebbens) (03/23/91)
aks> I ask these questions, not to inveigle a firm committment date, but aks> to help me determine whether I should port Epoch 3.2 to my aks> RS6000/AIX3.1 and use it for a while, or would I be better off aks> waiting for the fabled Emacs 19. marc> Take a look at epoch-rios.tar.Z on cs.uiuc.edu (128.174.252.1) in marc> /pub/epoch-files/epoch for an already-ported version of Epoch 3.2. Yes, there is a version ported to the RS6000, but it is using code older than was release with Emacs 18.57. I have Emacs 18.57 running on my RS6000, with a working dumped Emacs. It would be a non-trivial amount of work to port the new changes from Emacs 18.57, even the AIX-specific changes, to Epoch 3.2. Oh well -- no one else has spoken up; if I get it done, I'll let you all know. Alan
darrylo@HPNMXX.HP.COM (03/23/91)
> It is certainly regrettable to have made any promises about release > dates, and as far as I am concerned I can only attribute this to my > weakness before severe insistence from various groups of users. > Rather than make such an error again, I will go back to work. I want to emphasize that I am NOT trying to insult the FSF or any developer of a GNU program. (From what I've been hearing, V19 is going to be a killer -- good job!) On the contrary, I support the FSF, and I believe in what they are doing. However, I am concerned about the slow pace, and of the past "broken promises". I think the FSF should NEVER give out time estimates, no matter how vague. The software will be ready when it's ready. -- Darryl Okahata UUCP: {hplabs!, hpcea!, hpfcla!} hpnmd!darrylo Internet: darrylo%hpnmd@relay.hp.com DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not constitute the support, opinion or policy of Hewlett-Packard or of the little green men that have been following him all day.
donn@MILTON.U.WASHINGTON.EDU (Donn Cave) (03/23/91)
From: alarson@SRC.Honeywell.COM (Aaron Larson) Subject: Re: Emacs 19 | ... I don't think you can ask for schedules from people giving |you SW. However, negative schedules would help me plan. I.e. "Emacs |v19 won't be out within the next N months". That way I can decide if I |should upgrade minor emacs/epoch versions and port over all my extensions, |which is usually not a trivial job. Right on. Frequent readers of these lists/newsgroups may sometimes wonder "Why is this person using emacs 18.54 / g++ 1.36 / bash 1.04? If they would just get with the program and run the current version, surely their problems would vanish!". Of course to some extent this is pure inertia on the part of the user, but you bet the uncertainty described above has an effect, particularly at large installations where changes affect lots of people. It sounds like a good idea to me. Hell, if something amazingly happens to get done ahead of the negative prediction, maybe it can get run through a little alpha-testing. But, why have minor emacs/epoch versions at all? It seems like this constant drift of the current major version must take up a lot of time and energy, on the part of the developers and certainly on the part of installers. If there are bugs, there should be minimal patches for them, such that they can be installed without much fear of breaking anything. Of course, the minor version schedule currently used for most GNU products is quite appropriate for beta testing, but emacs and gcc aren't beta testing. Donn Cave, University Computing Services, University of Washington donn@cac.washington.edu