POV Ray mode and others non-text editing packages

[David Capello]

Why we include POV-Ray mode?

How "dictionary" works? I never used it before.

There is a ahk-mode.el, but we don't include AutoHotKey program, we should
include it? Here
http://code.google.com/p/ergoemacs/wiki/DeveloperIntro says that
we will include it, but we don't. Also I don't see any relationship between
AutoHotKey and a text editor (why ErgoEmacs should include it?).

[Xah Lee]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 7:44 PM, David Capello <davidc...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Why we include POV-Ray mode?

POV-Ray is a pretty popular open source ray tracing program and 3d modler...

probably the most widely known.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POV-Ray if you don't know already.

> How "dictionary" works? I never used it before.

you can call dictionary-lookup-definition, which looks up definition of the current word.

(it gets info from dict.org and display result in split pane)

> There is a ahk-mode.el, but we don't include AutoHotKey program, we should

> include it? Here

> http://code.google.com/p/ergoemacs/wiki/DeveloperIntro says that

> we will include it, but we don't. Also I don't see any relationship between

> AutoHotKey and a text editor (why ErgoEmacs should include it?).

AutoHotKey seems to be a popular keyboard macro software for Windows... i included a mode for editing its scripting lang.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotKey

these packages are small... and seems useful. Are you thinking they shouldn't be included?

 Xah

[David Capello]

Hi,

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:30 AM, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 7:44 PM, David Capello <davidc...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Why we include POV-Ray mode?
> POV-Ray is a pretty popular open source ray tracing program and 3d modler...
> probably the most widely known.
> see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POV-Ray if you don't know already.

I know about POV-Ray, I was just thinking if we should include packages for
every little niche out there (maybe not so little, anyway I don't know too much
editors with povray support).

>> How "dictionary" works? I never used it before.
> you can call dictionary-lookup-definition, which looks up definition of the
> current word.
> (it gets info from dict.org and display result in split pane)

Sounds great. I'll try it.

>> There is a ahk-mode.el, but we don't include AutoHotKey program, we should
>> include it? Here
>> http://code.google.com/p/ergoemacs/wiki/DeveloperIntro says that
>> we will include it, but we don't. Also I don't see any relationship
>> between
>> AutoHotKey and a text editor (why ErgoEmacs should include it?).
> AutoHotKey seems to be a popular keyboard macro software for Windows... i
> included a mode for editing its scripting lang.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotKey
> these packages are small... and seems useful. Are you thinking they
> shouldn't be included?

I don't know how much popular is AutoHotKey, but again, I don't
see too much editors with AutoHotKey files support.

With this I want to say that we should focus in mainstream programming
modes (Java, C++, C#, Python, PHP, Ruby, etc.) and text modes (XML,
HTML, CSS, LaTeX, etc.). E.g. It makes sense to include a VBS mode,
ASP, .bat, etc. But I don't know how many people will use POV-Ray mode.

Maybe we should start thinking in a way to download & install extra
packages in a easy way (also some kind of "check updates", etc.).
I think there is a thread about these issues in Emacs-devel mailing list.

Bye

[David Capello]

[Off-topic]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:30 AM, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:

> AutoHotKey seems to be a popular keyboard macro software for Windows...

About this, I recommend you to try Launchy, it is a good program to
start programs.

http://www.launchy.net/

[Xah Lee]

David Capello wrote:

> I don't know how much popular is AutoHotKey, but again, I don't

> see too much editors with AutoHotKey files support.

> With this I want to say that we should focus in mainstream programming

> modes (Java, C++, C#, Python, PHP, Ruby, etc.) and text modes (XML,

> HTML, CSS, LaTeX, etc.). E.g. It makes sense to include a VBS mode,

> ASP, .bat, etc. But I don't know how many people will use POV-Ray mode.

> Maybe we should start thinking in a way to download & install extra

> packages in a easy way (also some kind of "check updates", etc.).

> I think there is a thread about these issues in Emacs-devel mailing list.

yeah, agree.

not sure how hard that is or how it can be designed.

i guess every month or so ErgoEmacs will automatically check a url to see if there's new version. If so, alert user to upgrade.

 Many apps these days have automatic update checking, and automatic upgrade. (consider these as 2separate concepts)

For Automatic Update Checking, user doesn't need to know anything (except maybe a preference setting). When there is a major new version, the app pops up a dialog asking if user wants to download the new app. (on the Mac, some less popular/big software will popup a dialog and ask user to click to go to a website to download the new instead, once downloaded, user double click to do the install/upgrade. So, these software have automatic update check but don't have automatic upgrade system)

Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, FireFox, much of Apple's soft e.g. Safari/iTune, Google products e.g. Google Chrome, Google Earth, and Opera... etc, all do both auto check and auto upgrade, in the most transparent, painless way. I think we could model after them.

I thought about this a little before for ErgoEmacs... the implementation and design may not be easy. Here's some quick thoughts...

• For implementation, we have to think about do we check/upgrade the whole emacs binary, or just the packages, or take consideration of both? whichever we decide, the design must be that it is most painless and transparent for the user. (that is, user shouldn't be prompted about some emacs tech details, tech jargons as “elisp package vs binary” etc he wouldn't understand.)

• the design for our implementation must consider both Windows and unixes (linux and mac), so that if we just do Windows now, and if later a developers want to add support for Mac, it can be implemented without changing the architecture.

• on linuxes, they have their own package management systems (used to be Redhat vs Debian... not sure what are there these days). I don't have much experience with them, except using Mac's Fink since early 1990s... Fink is based on Debian packages. In Fink, the update checking is manual... basically, when user wants, she can run some command to update a particular software or all his installed software, then from there it's pretty much all automatic.

On linuxes, do they have the convention of automatic update check such as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS?

should i open a issue on this?

PS thanks for the Launchy tip. It seems to be similar to Mac's Mercury, which i use and is great.

 Xah