Re: Changes for emacs 28

[João Távora]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > This point comes up here so often that probably someone has
>   > already suggested this silly idea:  Why not have a -1998
>   > (or -1334 (; ) startup switch for the old timers?
>
> I like the idea, but this should be something to set in .emacs,
> not a command-line option.

It must be a command-line option because when reproducing and fixing
bugs on Emacs, you very frequently have the need to run "a bare Emacs
-Q" frequently from a shell, devoid of any third-party packages that may
be interfering.  Maintainers would have to additionally specify the
--medieval switch to feel minimally confortable in that setting. It's
not possible to do this in the .emacs because Emacs -Q jumps that, by
definition.

Come to think of it, this is a bit of a counter argument against my
proposal: if we accept new defaults we must be ready to run Emacs -Q's
that have them.  If the new defaults are to include, say, vim-like
keybindings (ugh!), then maintainers are going to have lots of pain.  

This was a bit of an extreme example, but I guess what I'm saying is
that we should still criteriously choose new defaults.

> Does the minus sign stand for BC?  I don't think Emacs existed in the
> time of the Third Dynasty of Ur.  I developed the first Emacs
> in Babylon in -1765.

1334 was my lame attempt of spelling "leet" in "leetspeak", but I put a
4 instead of 7, i.e. I meant 1337.  Guess I'm not so leet after
all. Both sound suitably medieval, tho.

João