[AUCTeX-devel] Re: Changes in font locking

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Reiner Steib writes:

 > And these are only quotes from the one of the (three years old) thread
 > related to `with-syntax-table'.

And from only one developer.  (I am not XEmacs's counterpart to rms,
you know.)  Which is precisely why they're not particularly relevant
to the general stance of XEmacs, only to *this* developer's response
to *this* one bug.

 > Not exactly encouraging in my book.

For *this* bug, you were *supposed* to be discouraged.  I've now said
at least four times that *I* won't fix *this* bug, although as you
know now, I'm perfectly happy to commit *somebody else's* fix for it.
But I had my reasons, and I assure you that had the ChangeLog from
Stefan not appeared, *I* would likely have said "no" again.

If you think what I do and say significantly affect the XEmacs code
base, well, I guess I have to admit I'm flattered---but you're wrong.
I'm no superprogrammer; I can make a perceptible difference only over
years.  Working on your bug would only mean I can't work on something
else.  And if what I say about fixing any given bug matters, it's only
because the other core developers are happy to have cover as they
focus on the issues they consider important.

In general, we do read all reports, we fix the bugs we can, and we
refuse to promise to fix bugs that we don't have the resources to fix.
We help users who try to help themselves.  "Best effort", just like
every other free software project.