about obsolete packages

[stephen at xemacs.org]

Ren? Kyllingstad writes:

 > Send bug reports to AUCTeX.

David won't like that.  He can't do anything about our SUMOs---which
is the reason this thread is happening.  Doing it that way requires a
commitment on our part to responding to AUCTeX development in a timely
fashion.

 > I'm arguing for a pragmatic solution

As you point out, core developer effort is at very low levels.  This
proposal means extra work for the core, so it's not a solution, unless
you spell it "v o l u n t e e r".

Specifically, *somebody* must track the AUCTeX releases, and update
our package lists.  *Somebody* must rebuild the SUMOs.  *Somebody*
must forward the bug reports to AUCTeX and follow up on their fixes.

If Norbert is willing to sign on to those tasks (and pragmatically, he
has to do the SUMO builds), you're golden.  If not, you're on the
spot; you need to offer the support that goes above and beyond what
he's already doing.

 > XEmacs Beta users would have to keep an older version of XEmacs
 > around for (La)TeX editing until the bug has been fixed.

In principle, the beta testers deserve better, not worse, support than
the stable users.  You should also remember that our package tree is
shared with SXEmacs, which is no longer even close to being a mere
clone of XEmacs 21.4, and is under quite active development AFAIK.

Furthermore, for many, perhaps most, non-USian Windows users 21.4 is
no longer acceptable because of its many defects in handling Unicode
on Windows.  This is probably also true for SuSE Linux users, which
AFAIK abandoned the stable line a while back because it isn't
compatible with their build procedures (where have I heard that reason
before?) and functions unacceptably in a fully UTF-8 environment.

So I don't think that's close enough to an acceptable workaround to be
considered anything but a serious defect in your proposal.