From xemacs-m  Wed Jun 18 12:17:17 1997
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From: Noah Friedman <friedman@splode.com>
To: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org
Subject: Re: Version Non-control (was Re: Ebola vaccines)
Reply-To: friedman@splode.com
In-Reply-To: <hniksic@srce.hr> , 18 Jun 1997 12:35:16 +0200
References: <199706112130.RAA27486@anthem.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
	<864tb4es2d.fsf@kramer.in.aventail.com>
	<199706112300.TAA27566@anthem.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
	<m2wwo03f9u.fsf@altair.xemacs.org>
	<199706121515.LAA20240@black-ice.cc.vt.edu>
	<199706121719.NAA28093@anthem.CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
	<kig4tb32hv7.fsf@jagor.srce.hr>
	<hniksic@srce.hr>
	<199706180404.VAA10608@piglet.splode.com>
	<QQcukp20994.199706180446@crystal.WonderWorks.COM>
	<kigu3iwkxln.fsf@jagor.srce.hr>

>> Some things aren't worth fixing.
>
>But why bother with TTY support at all, then?  Redisplay optimizations 
>are quite basic thing.  If we don't consider them worth fixing, it is
>questionnable how much we care about TTY-s in general.

I wouldn't characterize the issue that far.  I don't think anyone really
questions the utility of having xemacs work on ttys.  And there's nothing
about the current tty support that needs "fixing", as far as I'm concerned,
because I don't think anything's broken.  What it needs is optimization for
slow terminals.  (I complain because I'm a user of a slow terminal and
long-haul network connections over godforsaken SprintLink, but I'm happily
willing to admit I'm not a typical user, if that's really the case.)

The question is who has Kyle's estimated week or so of dedicated time to
invest to make it better.  This is all a volunteer effort, after all.  I'm
happy to be declared responsible for this issue, but I don't know off-hand
when I'll actually find the time.  As it is now, I only have time for
reading this list about once a week (or sometimes once every two weeks).
I'm hoping that will improve eventually.

It still seemed worthwhile to raise the subject because it was obvious that
some minority of people do care somewhat about tty optimization, but don't
say anything about it to the people who actually maintain xemacs.  The tone
that should be read into my email on this subject is not "stupid, you're
wrong about how important it is, fix it already"; it's more like "I don't
think it's totally unimportant and someone should still address this
someday."  

What I'm trying to guard against is the perception that the optimization is
so unnecessary that patches to implement them would be rejected on the
grounds that they're just code bloat.

