From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Carsten Dominik Subject: Support (or not) for Emacs 21, and XEmacs Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:15:02 +0200 Message-ID: <15649C3E-517D-433D-977F-06008C20A4F4@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1O1yJr-0000nQ-Td for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:51:35 -0400 Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=45508 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O1yJp-0000lP-Cm for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:51:35 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O1yJn-0001xA-1W for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:51:33 -0400 Received: from ey-out-1920.google.com ([74.125.78.146]:16117) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O1yJm-0001wx-TJ for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:51:31 -0400 Received: by ey-out-1920.google.com with SMTP id 4so5226eyg.34 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:51:29 -0700 (PDT) List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Org-Mode List Hi everyone, I am, once again, reconsidering support for Emacs 21 and XEmacs in Org-mode. Supporting older versions of Emacsen does make the code in Org-mode more complex, needs time to rewrite or copy features that do exist in newer versions of Emacs. Also, it slows down the process of updating the version of Org-mode distributed with Emacs, because the compatibility code makes it often hard to comply with Emacs rules and practices. What I would like to do is the following. We are now working toward release 7.0 of Org-mode, which will hopefully see full integration of org-babel. I am considering to make Org-mode version 6.35 the last version of Org-mode supporting XEmacs and Emacs 21. That would mean that I would still fix critical bugs in 6.35 and keep that package on the website indefinitely. So people stuck with Emacs 21 and XEmacs do have an excellent version of Org-mode available. Git users will be able indefinitely to select this version of Org-mode to support and Emacs 21 or XEmacs installation. For version 7.0 I would then not only stop actively supporting these older Emacsen, but I would actually remove some of the twisted code that has accumulated over the years in order to support older versions. Important examples are all the stuff in org-compat, but also key bindings and other stuff. There are about 100 cases of (featurep 'xemacs) in the sources, and many other places where I have to check for the availablility of a specific feature or function. If you object to such a development, please step into this discussion. - Carsten