[Gnu-arch-users] Re: tla front-ends

[Matthieu Moy]

David Allouche <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 15:18 -0500, John Meinel wrote:

[...]

>> I guess there is xtla, though I think of it as an emacs plugin, not
>> a front end. Simply because I don't know emacs (I'm a vim user),
>> and I don't know what kind of benefit vs time to learn emacs just
>> to use xtla.

The main benefit of xtla in comparison with another front-end is that
it's well integrated in the editor itself. If you like Emacs, you
should like xtla. If you don't use Emacs, then learning Emacs + xtla
will be a big investment in comparison to the benefits, clearly.

The great thing with a front-end integrated in your editor is that you
can switch from revision-control oriented and editting oriented tasks
easily. For example, while viewing changes with M-x tla-changes RET,
just press RET to jump to the right line of the right file and start
editting it. While editting, M-x tla-file-ediff RET will open a ediff
(graphical diff in Emacs) session for the current file.

> xtla is a very interesting achievement, however I doubt it could teach
> much about the right way to write Arch GUI applications, as it is a very
> idiosyncratic emacs application.

Yes and no. There are a few concepts in xtla that I think are good,
and reuseable in a GUI (bookmarks, M-x tla-browse for the archive
browser, revision list interface).

-- 
Matthieu