Re: Emacs on OS X development

[David Reitter]

On Jul 14, 2012, at 8:54 PM, Chong Yidong wrote:

> Now, the problem is that the quality of the Cocoa port has not been
> improving as quickly as I'd like.  But this is essentially because most
> active Emacs hackers don't work on Mac OS, and those that do are
> interested in working on stuff other than the Cocoa code. 

I've been using the NS port in Aquamacs for a long time, and it's actually 
quite usable for us.
Of course I had to work around certain issues (ispell), and I receive a good 
number of crash reports (but not more than would be reasonably expected from 
some 14,000 daily users).  I wish some of these things could be addressed. 

The Emacs project has made a commitment to the NS port, and that's what is 
important to me as a downstream user.  The NS port is also very patchable due 
to its consequent use of Objective C APIs and some object-oriented code.  Given 
my deep respect for YM's qualities as a coder, I sincerely hope that he can one 
day combine the AppKit portion of his port with the NS port (and leave the 
Carbon APIs behind).