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* Emacs 21.4.1 support
@ 2009-09-14 17:45 Jing Su @ Gmail
  2009-09-14 18:59 ` Dave Täht
  2009-09-14 19:13 ` Tassilo Horn
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Jing Su @ Gmail @ 2009-09-14 17:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-orgmode

Hi guys,

I was wondering how to install org-mode for Emacs 21.4.1, which is the 
latest version provided by RHEL 5 and RHEL 4. I even cannot find 
previous releases for Emacs 21 at all, nor on the FAQ. It looks that 
Emacs 21 is no longer supported.

I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since RHEL 
is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on servers, 
it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such ``industrial 
standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ). System administrators 
will take risk to install unofficial org-mode, but most of them won't 
risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks, for a newer but 
unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.

Thanks a lot and best regards :)

Jing


-- 
***********************************************************
Jing Su
PhD, Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Tech & Emory University
Email: JingSu@gatech.edu

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-14 17:45 Emacs 21.4.1 support Jing Su @ Gmail
@ 2009-09-14 18:59 ` Dave Täht
  2009-09-14 20:15   ` tycho garen
  2009-09-14 19:13 ` Tassilo Horn
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread
From: Dave Täht @ 2009-09-14 18:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jing Su @ Gmail; +Cc: emacs-orgmode

"Jing Su @ Gmail" <Jing.Su.66@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi guys,
>
> I was wondering how to install org-mode for Emacs 21.4.1, which is the
> latest version provided by RHEL 5 and RHEL 4. I even cannot find
> previous releases for Emacs 21 at all, nor on the FAQ. It looks that
> Emacs 21 is no longer supported.
>
> I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since
> RHEL is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on
> servers, it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such
> industrial standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ). System
> administrators will take risk to install unofficial org-mode, but most
> of them won't risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks, for a
> newer but unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.
>

No, to heck with that. Most serious users of emacs end up compiling
their own release, at least until recently, because the official
releases were so out of date. I would suggest pulling current rpms from
fedora (maybe they have the equivalent of emacs-snapshot?) And tying
those on rhel.

You are talking about going back to the pre-xft fonts and for that
matter, almost-pre-gtk days of emacs here. If your primary usage is on
servers, that's less of an issue, but things like tramp mode work quite
a bit better on more current emacsen.

If there is such a thing as a non-serious user of emacs, no one in their
right mind would want to cope with 21.x.

> Thanks a lot and best regards :)

>
> Jing

-- 
Dave Taht
http://the-edge.blogspot.com

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-14 17:45 Emacs 21.4.1 support Jing Su @ Gmail
  2009-09-14 18:59 ` Dave Täht
@ 2009-09-14 19:13 ` Tassilo Horn
  2009-09-14 20:03   ` Andrew Stribblehill
  2009-09-14 22:35   ` Leo
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Tassilo Horn @ 2009-09-14 19:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-orgmode

"Jing Su @ Gmail" <Jing.Su.66@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Jing,

> I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since
> RHEL is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on
> servers, it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such
> ``industrial standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ).

Emacs 21.4 is nearly 4 years old!  Org-mode uses quite a bunch of more
or less recent emacs features, so getting it fully working would be
quite a hassle with a lot of compatibility code.

Maybe an older org-mode version supports emacs 21.4 and has all features
you need.  But I cannot find a downloads page for old versions...

Or get the git version and use the revision before the commit
31858e5c39404cf2bc745fe05f59c7ce6816db74.

,----
| commit 31858e5c39404cf2bc745fe05f59c7ce6816db74
| Author: Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
| Date:   Tue Apr 21 14:00:24 2009 +0200
| 
|     End of Emacs 21 support.
`----

> System administrators will take risk to install unofficial org-mode,
> but most of them won't risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks,
> for a newer but unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.

You could compile and install emacs in your $HOME.  The INSTALL file
coming with it tells how to do that.

Bye,
Tassilo

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-14 19:13 ` Tassilo Horn
@ 2009-09-14 20:03   ` Andrew Stribblehill
  2009-09-14 22:35   ` Leo
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Andrew Stribblehill @ 2009-09-14 20:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Tassilo Horn; +Cc: emacs-orgmode

2009/9/14 Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>:
> "Jing Su @ Gmail" <Jing.Su.66@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Jing,
>
>> I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since
>> RHEL is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on
>> servers, it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such
>> ``industrial standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ).
>
> Emacs 21.4 is nearly 4 years old!  Org-mode uses quite a bunch of more
> or less recent emacs features, so getting it fully working would be
> quite a hassle with a lot of compatibility code.
>
> Maybe an older org-mode version supports emacs 21.4 and has all features
> you need.  But I cannot find a downloads page for old versions...
>
> Or get the git version and use the revision before the commit
> 31858e5c39404cf2bc745fe05f59c7ce6816db74.
>
> ,----
> | commit 31858e5c39404cf2bc745fe05f59c7ce6816db74
> | Author: Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>
> | Date:   Tue Apr 21 14:00:24 2009 +0200
> |
> |     End of Emacs 21 support.
> `----
>
>> System administrators will take risk to install unofficial org-mode,
>> but most of them won't risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks,
>> for a newer but unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.
>
> You could compile and install emacs in your $HOME.  The INSTALL file
> coming with it tells how to do that.

I agree. In fact, when I was a real sysadmin, I used to maintain a
local build of Emacs  for my users.

However, I tried compiling the latest org-mode with Emacs 21.4 and
basic functionality works: tab, shift-tab, TODO, the day/week view of
the agenda -- and these are the only things I've tried.

See for yourself how well an org-mode build works and it may turn out
not to be an issue.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-14 18:59 ` Dave Täht
@ 2009-09-14 20:15   ` tycho garen
  2009-09-15  1:10     ` Dave Täht
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread
From: tycho garen @ 2009-09-14 20:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Täht; +Cc: emacs-orgmode

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 12:59:53PM -0600, Dave Täht wrote:
> "Jing Su @ Gmail" <Jing.Su.66@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since
> > RHEL is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on
> > servers, it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such
> > industrial standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ). System
> > administrators will take risk to install unofficial org-mode, but most
> > of them won't risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks, for a
> > newer but unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.
> >
> 
> No, to heck with that. Most serious users of emacs end up compiling
> their own release, at least until recently, because the official
> releases were so out of date. I would suggest pulling current rpms from
> fedora (maybe they have the equivalent of emacs-snapshot?) And tying
> those on rhel.

A couple of things. Most significantly, I think it's important to
avoid being so blase about supporting this subset of users,
particularly when the answers--with a little bit of digging--are
pretty simple. Having said that, there's a bunch of stuff that
probably won't work, I would offer a number of other possible
solution. 

First, I'd look at EPEL, rather than Fedora as a source for RHEL
packages of more recent emacsen to use. If you can get a version of
emacs 22.(something) there's a version of org-mode included with that
version. So a little hop should be enough to get you basic
functionality. 

If you're running on servers, as it sounds like you are, getting
graphical support for all the new things that have happened in the
last two version of emacs, might be easier. So that while a lot of
things have changed in emacs in the last four years, the subset of
things in emacs that have changed in the terminal mode, might be
somewhat smaller. And really since org-mode is mostly compatible with
emacs22 still (right?), the barrier might be even lower than many
people think, particularly if you're not going for *full
functionality*. 

Having said that, how much emacs hacekry do people do on servers. Even
though I have emacs23-nox installed on my server, I must say that most
of my text-file-editing on the server happens in Zile, which is
just emacs-like enough for me to avoid pulling my hair out, but very
small/lightweight. So I guess after all of that I'm not sure that I
see the use-case you propose.

As an aside, I think OS X ships with emacs21, so it's not just RHEL,
but I think that more people are willing to tinker with OS X than they
are willing to tinker with RHEL. But, if someone is willing to package
(or use the OpenSuSE build process) to make org-mode/emacs23 packages
for RHEL I think sysadmins might be more willing to give it a try,
given the wonders of (quasi)modern package management. 

Cheers,
tycho

-- 
tycho(ish) @
garen@tychoish.com
http://www.tychoish.com/
http://www.criticalfutures.com/
"don't get it right, get it written" -- james thurber

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-14 19:13 ` Tassilo Horn
  2009-09-14 20:03   ` Andrew Stribblehill
@ 2009-09-14 22:35   ` Leo
  2009-09-14 23:08     ` Carsten Dominik
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread
From: Leo @ 2009-09-14 22:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-orgmode

On 2009-09-14 20:13 +0100, Tassilo Horn wrote:
> Emacs 21.4 is nearly 4 years old! Org-mode uses quite a bunch of more
> or less recent emacs features, so getting it fully working would be
> quite a hassle with a lot of compatibility code.

I agree.

Org is moving forward extremely fast and the main development has been
done single-handedly by Carsten.

On my server where I have only 500M quota, I install emacs23 to /tmp and
make a backup of that.

Leo

-- 
Emacs uptime: 2 hours, 27 minutes, 15 seconds

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-14 22:35   ` Leo
@ 2009-09-14 23:08     ` Carsten Dominik
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Carsten Dominik @ 2009-09-14 23:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Leo; +Cc: emacs-orgmode


On Sep 14, 2009, at 11:35 PM, Leo wrote:

> On 2009-09-14 20:13 +0100, Tassilo Horn wrote:
>> Emacs 21.4 is nearly 4 years old! Org-mode uses quite a bunch of more
>> or less recent emacs features, so getting it fully working would be
>> quite a hassle with a lot of compatibility code.

That said,  I think much still works on Emacs 21.  I have not had any  
complaints about that recently....

- Carsten


>
> I agree.
>
> Org is moving forward extremely fast and the main development has been
> done single-handedly by Carsten.
>
> On my server where I have only 500M quota, I install emacs23 to /tmp  
> and
> make a backup of that.
>
> Leo
>
> -- 
> Emacs uptime: 2 hours, 27 minutes, 15 seconds
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-14 20:15   ` tycho garen
@ 2009-09-15  1:10     ` Dave Täht
  2009-09-15  1:21       ` Eric Schulte
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread
From: Dave Täht @ 2009-09-15  1:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tycho garen; +Cc: emacs-orgmode


tycho garen <garen@tychoish.com> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 12:59:53PM -0600, Dave Täht wrote:
>> "Jing Su @ Gmail" <Jing.Su.66@gmail.com> writes:
>> >
>> > I fully understand that Emacs 21 is way out of date. However, since
>> > RHEL is one of the mainstream commercial distros, and is common on
>> > servers, it would be great if org-mode can be consistent with such
>> > industrial standard'' (which is always way out of date :S ). System
>> > administrators will take risk to install unofficial org-mode, but most
>> > of them won't risk the whole server, i.e., risk their necks, for a
>> > newer but unofficial (according to RH) Emacs version.
>> >
>> 
>> No, to heck with that. Most serious users of emacs end up compiling
>> their own release, at least until recently, because the official
>> releases were so out of date. I would suggest pulling current rpms from
>> fedora (maybe they have the equivalent of emacs-snapshot?) And tying
>> those on rhel.
>
> A couple of things. Most significantly, I think it's important to
> avoid being so blase about supporting this subset of users,
> particularly when the answers--with a little bit of digging--are
> pretty simple. Having said that, there's a bunch of stuff that
> probably won't work, I would offer a number of other possible
> solution. 

You are right, but I have found the default install of emacs to be so
lame on so many distros for so long that I can understand why people
have flocked to other editors. 

Take, for example, the fact that no distro that I know of installs an
emacs compatible ansi-term entry in terminfo by default. (Couple that
with the fact that no terminal emulator I have found in emacs works as
good as the equivalent in xterm, gnome-terminal, etc. It's really
bugging me at the moment, actually, I'd really like to use ansi-term but
every time I try it ends up spewing data all on the same line after a
while. I swear I had it working well for a few days with 23.1 but then I
went back to emacs-snapshot because I didn't want to build everything
Emacs-snapshot did for me)

Multiply by the huge number of packages required to make emacs
competitive with eclipse, like semantic. Stir in missing-by-default
emacs modes like Python mode.

Compare with the bundled supported moduls of vim for system
administration and basic programming tasks. Simmer,
then run away.

Org is the first truly compelling application that emacs has had in years.

>
> First, I'd look at EPEL, rather than Fedora as a source for RHEL
> packages of more recent emacsen to use. If you can get a version of
> emacs 22.(something) there's a version of org-mode included with that
> version. So a little hop should be enough to get you basic
> functionality. 
>

Cool, I wasn't aware of that.

> If you're running on servers, as it sounds like you are, getting
> graphical support for all the new things that have happened in the
> last two version of emacs, might be easier. So that while a lot of
> things have changed in emacs in the last four years, the subset of
> things in emacs that have changed in the terminal mode, might be
> somewhat smaller. And really since org-mode is mostly compatible with
> emacs22 still (right?), the barrier might be even lower than many
> people think, particularly if you're not going for *full
> functionality*. 

That was the point I tried to make earlier, but wasn't clear. I rarely run
emacs on the server at all, preferring to use tramp to access files
elsewhere. (And things like pdsh, but I digress)

>
> Having said that, how much emacs hacekry do people do on servers. Even
> though I have emacs23-nox installed on my server, I must say that most
> of my text-file-editing on the server happens in Zile, which is
> just emacs-like enough for me to avoid pulling my hair out, but very
> small/lightweight. So I guess after all of that I'm not sure that I
> see the use-case you propose.
>
> As an aside, I think OS X ships with emacs21, so it's not just RHEL,

I've seen that version on a mac. It's sadly deficient. 

Every serious emacs user on a mac I know immediately installed aquamacs or a
more modern gnu emacs.

The unserious users just went away.

> but I think that more people are willing to tinker with OS X than they
> are willing to tinker with RHEL. But, if someone is willing to package

Heh. RHEL is there to be an OS you don't worry about, ever, but don't
use for anything new and interesting. It has a valid role in life but is
currently awfully long in the tooth.

> (or use the OpenSuSE build process) to make org-mode/emacs23 packages
> for RHEL I think sysadmins might be more willing to give it a try,
> given the wonders of (quasi)modern package management. 


>
> Cheers,
> tycho

-- 
Dave Taht
http://the-edge.blogspot.com

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

* Re: Emacs 21.4.1 support
  2009-09-15  1:10     ` Dave Täht
@ 2009-09-15  1:21       ` Eric Schulte
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Eric Schulte @ 2009-09-15  1:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Täht; +Cc: emacs-orgmode

d@teklibre.org (Dave Täht) writes:

> You are right, but I have found the default install of emacs to be so
> lame on so many distros for so long that I can understand why people
> have flocked to other editors. 
>
> Take, for example, the fact that no distro that I know of installs an
> emacs compatible ansi-term entry in terminfo by default. (Couple that
> with the fact that no terminal emulator I have found in emacs works as
> good as the equivalent in xterm, gnome-terminal, etc. It's really
> bugging me at the moment, actually, I'd really like to use ansi-term but
> every time I try it ends up spewing data all on the same line after a
> while. I swear I had it working well for a few days with 23.1 but then I
> went back to emacs-snapshot because I didn't want to build everything
> Emacs-snapshot did for me)
>
> Multiply by the huge number of packages required to make emacs
> competitive with eclipse, like semantic. Stir in missing-by-default
> emacs modes like Python mode.
>
> Compare with the bundled supported moduls of vim for system
> administration and basic programming tasks. Simmer,
> then run away.

For a better set of defaults (more modes and bells and whistles and a
nice extensible initialization structure), I'd recommend one of the
following...

http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit/tree

or my preferred versions of the above

http://github.com/eschulte/emacs-starter-kit
http://eschulte.github.com/emacs-starter-kit/

cheers -- Eric

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2009-09-15  1:21 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 9+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2009-09-14 17:45 Emacs 21.4.1 support Jing Su @ Gmail
2009-09-14 18:59 ` Dave Täht
2009-09-14 20:15   ` tycho garen
2009-09-15  1:10     ` Dave Täht
2009-09-15  1:21       ` Eric Schulte
2009-09-14 19:13 ` Tassilo Horn
2009-09-14 20:03   ` Andrew Stribblehill
2009-09-14 22:35   ` Leo
2009-09-14 23:08     ` Carsten Dominik

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