Re: Possible change to startup.el

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
   Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 15:25:54 -0500

   So how about adopting a convention [...]

three approaches come to mind:

(a) title on first line in file, ending w/ fullstop (period);

(b) a local variable "title-range" specifies the beginning and end
    character positions of the title in the text;

(c) separate file TUTORIAL.metainfo that maps locale to various
    things, such as the info in (b), coding system for read, a
    bug-report or support-group email address, etc.

of these, i favor (c), even though it has similar maintenance
requirement as the alist, because the file has the advantage of
being more efficient to access, and its format is extensible.
(we can also subsume TUTORIAL.translators into it.)

next, (b) is nice because the existing flow does not have to be
changed.  however, the full file needs to be read in, or at least
enough so that its title is present and its coding can be
established.

lastly, (a) is straightforward (less prone to botch-ups).  i do
not like it for esthetic reasons only.  same thinking applies for
any fixed-position approach.

thi