Re: How you can help

["Avdi Grimm" <avdi@avdi.org>]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Ben Alexander <bva@alexanderonline.org> wrote:
> Ok, here's your chance.  This is something that has bothered me for quite
> some time, but I've never been able to reliably reproduce the problem.  And
> it's such a small issue.

Thanks!  I'll try to take a look tonight or this weekend.

> So the value of a testing framework is that this: if I'm going to announce
> to the world that I can't get something to work, (like the tab key), I'm
> going to make darn sure it's a real problem.  I'm going to spend the time to
> create a small sample file, that reliable creates the problem, and I'm going
> to try a few different scenarios.   But if I start to get lost or confused
> about which settings I've fiddled with or what is supposed to happen, I'll
> wander away from the problem and I won't submit the bug.  We all lose in
> that scenario.  But if the testing framework exists, and it is lightweight
> enough for novice emacs users (advanced enough to use M-x but not advanced
> enough to read lisp) then maybe I would have used it for this example.

For the record, I normally would never expect the user to submit
tests.  A description of the problem and some sample data is all I
expect.  Writing the a test to reproduce the behavior is the
programmer's responsibility as far as I'm concerned.

-- 
Avdi

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