Registry access on w32

[Lennart Borgman]

During the time I have tried to write an installer for Emacs on ms windows I
have many times wished that Emacs had support for accessing the registry. If
registry access was built into Emacs then much of what I have done could
have been done inside Emacs and that would have been a big benefit. I have
been tempted to write something like it myself.

The registry contains things like program locations, file associations,
printer information etc.

Now, when I read a post on [h-e-w] I stumbled upon a web page
(http://www.gnusoftware.com/Emacs/Registry/) which says it has a patch for
Emacs that allows this access. From the page:

    "Originally I created a patch to the Emacs sources to access to
    the registry from within Lisp, my patch was a proof of concept one,
    and wasn't terribly complete.

    Shortly afterwards this patch was superceded by a more complete
    offering from Jay Finger.

    Unfortunately since then not much has happened, and neither the
   registry access patch, nor my registry editing mode have made it
   into Emacs."

Why is this not included in Emacs? I believe it can make a big difference
for Emacs users on ms windows.

- Lennart