I built the NS port of emacs under Mac OS X 10.8 today from trunk. I realize a tremendous amount of work over the years has been done to clean up various glitches in menus, rendering, event handling, etc., many caused by my own poor work, but I was really disappointed to see some big steps backwards in basics. Here is a screenshot of the HELLO file from today on left, and a version from 3 years ago on the right.
I've stepped back my direct involvement in the port to find more time to focus on other things, and I appreciate the work of others who have taken up the slack. But glaring issues like extra blank space in the window, nonconformance to the system standard edge-rounding, and poor text rendering in the prevailing Carbon port (at the time) were part of what led me originally to resurrect the NS port to begin with back in 2004.
I don't know if the current steps backwards are due to the lack of maintenance in keeping up with internal core changes, or due to inadvertent and/or accepted losses in the course of making port enhancements. But I would request that when people make changes, they keep an eye out for regressions introduced by them, and refrain from committing improvements that introduce new (or old) problems.
All I can do is make this request humbly, and apologize for my own lack of involvement, which while it has surely led to improvement of the codebase overall, seems to have caused some penalty as well.
respectfully,
Adrian