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current state of XEmacs project
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Lynn David Newton
Aug 2, 2012, 11:58:00 AM8/2/12
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Greetings,
I'm trying to get a sense of where the XEmacs project currently stands. Is it actively being supported (meaning bug fixes and occasional new packages), even if perhaps new core features are not being pursued?
By way of background: I started using GNU Emacs around 1987, with version 18.something. I have used XEmacs continuously since it was in early beta state, when Jamie Zawinsky and the programmers at Lucid were working on it. At the time I worked as an engineer at Motorola, where I and some colleagues had a big interest in both forms of Emacs, and I helped quite a bit with the beta testing. I also had personal friends at Lucid at the time. In time I came to greatly prefer XEmacs over GNU Emacs, and when the split came, I just went with it.
Since that time my work has changed dramatically. I do little these days with XEmacs in the way of writing packages, tweaking startup files, or customizing key bindings and package variables. But I still depend on XEmacs daily for some of the most important things that I do on a computer, and the stuff that I've used for many years has served me very well.
Today my most heavily used platform is Mac OS X, on which I run XEmacs under X11. I would love to see it run independently of X11, of course, but I anticipate that's never going to happen. I also run a Linux system (latest Ubuntu) on which XEmacs works just fine.
I also use GNU Emacs on occasion, but have done almost nothing to configure it for heavy duty use. It works well as a backup editor for quick small jobs, though I don't use it often, because I generally have XEmacs running all the time.
My inquiry today is because when I look on xemacs.org, and on this group, and also other places I know to look, it appears to me that nothing much is happening with XEmacs any longer, so I was just wondering if there is still a project director, a community of active development, and a better place to send questions and the like. (Not that I have that many of them these days.)
Thanks.
--
Lynn David Newton
Columbus, Ohio
I'm trying to get a sense of where the XEmacs project currently stands. Is it actively being supported (meaning bug fixes and occasional new packages), even if perhaps new core features are not being pursued?
By way of background: I started using GNU Emacs around 1987, with version 18.something. I have used XEmacs continuously since it was in early beta state, when Jamie Zawinsky and the programmers at Lucid were working on it. At the time I worked as an engineer at Motorola, where I and some colleagues had a big interest in both forms of Emacs, and I helped quite a bit with the beta testing. I also had personal friends at Lucid at the time. In time I came to greatly prefer XEmacs over GNU Emacs, and when the split came, I just went with it.
Since that time my work has changed dramatically. I do little these days with XEmacs in the way of writing packages, tweaking startup files, or customizing key bindings and package variables. But I still depend on XEmacs daily for some of the most important things that I do on a computer, and the stuff that I've used for many years has served me very well.
Today my most heavily used platform is Mac OS X, on which I run XEmacs under X11. I would love to see it run independently of X11, of course, but I anticipate that's never going to happen. I also run a Linux system (latest Ubuntu) on which XEmacs works just fine.
I also use GNU Emacs on occasion, but have done almost nothing to configure it for heavy duty use. It works well as a backup editor for quick small jobs, though I don't use it often, because I generally have XEmacs running all the time.
My inquiry today is because when I look on xemacs.org, and on this group, and also other places I know to look, it appears to me that nothing much is happening with XEmacs any longer, so I was just wondering if there is still a project director, a community of active development, and a better place to send questions and the like. (Not that I have that many of them these days.)
Thanks.
--
Lynn David Newton
Columbus, Ohio
Julian Bradfield
Aug 2, 2012, 12:39:17 PM8/2/12
to
On 2012-08-02, Lynn David Newton <lynn....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to get a sense of where the XEmacs project currently
> stands. Is it actively being supported (meaning bug fixes and
> occasional new packages), even if perhaps new core features are not
> being pursued?
It's hard to say. Bugs are fixed if they are reported and somebody can
> I'm trying to get a sense of where the XEmacs project currently
> stands. Is it actively being supported (meaning bug fixes and
> occasional new packages), even if perhaps new core features are not
> being pursued?
fix them, which is generally the case.
The (ten-year old) beta branch still slowly acquires more core
features, while the stable branch is frozen apart from bug fixes.
What doesn't happen, is support for recent packages. If the package
maintainer isn't willing to maintain it for XEmacs, it won't
work. There are a few packages that have specific folk maintaining
them for XEmacs on behalf of the package author, but not many.
> My inquiry today is because when I look on xemacs.org, and on this
> group, and also other places I know to look, it appears to me that
> nothing much is happening with XEmacs any longer, so I was just
> wondering if there is still a project director, a community of
> active development, and a better place to send questions and the
> like. (Not that I have that many of them these days.)
a director) hangs out on the xemacs-beta list, and frankly these days
that's the best place to send advanced user questions too. It's not
high traffic!
If I have to be honest, it's impossible to recommend XEmacs to any new
user - not least because its multilingual support is now far behind
FSF, and also because most packages are written for FSF.
Like you, I have XEmacs deeply wired into my brain and working
practices, and since I don't use packages (bar a few basic ones), I
can still survive. I don't even like 21.5 - too many regressions - so
I've gone so far as to fork my own branch of 21.4 and convert it to
Unicode. But that's a bit extreme....
Citizen Jimserac
Aug 23, 2012, 9:41:27 AM8/23/12
to
On Aug 2, 12:39 pm, Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
I'm not a full time programmer any more but after trying Emacs
numerous times I eventually always switch back to Xemacs. I don't
know what it is, slight differences in intuitive expectations or what
the heck but I still use it in preference to anything else. I despise
Visual Studio or Eclipse type environments, though I've used them and
they are super at certain things, there is some sort of narrowing of
focus, (or "dumbing" down, if you will) when you use them.
Particularly Visual Studio. That does not disparage the numerous
people successfully using them. If it works for you then go with
it.
Xemacs works for me.
J.
numerous times I eventually always switch back to Xemacs. I don't
know what it is, slight differences in intuitive expectations or what
the heck but I still use it in preference to anything else. I despise
Visual Studio or Eclipse type environments, though I've used them and
they are super at certain things, there is some sort of narrowing of
focus, (or "dumbing" down, if you will) when you use them.
Particularly Visual Studio. That does not disparage the numerous
people successfully using them. If it works for you then go with
it.
Xemacs works for me.
J.
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