[AUCTeX-devel] Re: [comp.emacs.xemacs] AUCTeX 11.84 released

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:

 > You better back this up with an actual message id.

I admit that I am not in a position to provide evidence that would
convince you that you insulted Uwe, and I apologize for claiming that
you did insult him.

 > And that is not an insult, but rather praise: he took up the ball as
 > well as he could because XEmacs developers intimate with the package
 > system dropped the ball several years ago.

*sigh*  Don't you see that you don't even defend yourself against
accusations of insult without resorting to insulting phrases?  Don't
you realize that it is not possible for a user-supported free software
project to "drop the ball"?  If *our users* had asked us to remove the
package because it's useless, we would be *perverse* to keep it.  But
if in our judgment many of our users benefit from availability of an
old version of a package as compared to removal, that's a compromise,
not "dropping the ball," upstream's opinion notwithstanding.

The XEmacs developers are willing to *help*; we simply are unwilling
to make you boss, and have some conditions on putting code into the
packages that we are unwilling to bend.  I would like to use the
upstream distribution as the basis for the XEmacs package as much as
possible, but what you demand is something that is not an XEmacs
package.  It is, of course, our prerogative to determine what is and
is not acceptable as an XEmacs package, just as it is the AUCTeX
maintainers' prerogative to determine whether producing a package that
meets our requirements is an appropriate use of AUCTeX resources.

Your (David's) response to those facts is insults, bullying and
arrogant attitude, references to legal action, threats of dropping
support, etc.  Is it any wonder that we respond with defensive
hostility?

 > I think we should just declare XEmacs a non-goal for AUCTeX and
 > either removing all XEmacs support or declare it open for bit rot.

I hope that the AUCTeX project will continue to provide support for
XEmacs users.  We stand ready to consult when the documentation is
unclear, and we'll do our best to respond appropriately to problem
reports (although our resources are extremely constrained at the
moment).  I recognize that AUCTeX resources are also limited, and
since I have minimal knowledge of AUCTeX's user population and needs,
I will simply trust that you will make a balanced decision concerning
XEmacs support.  I have no recommendation to make to you.