Motif (getting nedit to work with lesstif)

[Thomas Orgis]

Am Fri, 6 Mar 2009 19:53:28 +0100
schrieb Joerg Fischer <jf505 at gmx.de>: 

> No, sorry, we have to find some working free tif for Source Mag.

That's why I asked for your snapshot;-)

> (I hope you didn't do already ;-). On the Fedora project you're more
> likely to find someone fixing bugs,

Or debian and gentoo, for that matter. Of course I should have looked
there first for fixed lesstif versions.
Many distributions are notoriously patching stuff -- but sometimes it's
also necessary. I'll have a look at the fixes in the big distros and
port stuff over, if it helps.
For the greater good I may just end up hosting a source tarball with
the necessary patches applied myself.
That's one main grief I have with all the  distros doing patching on
their own: Stuff tends to stay buried, not reaching upstream (which
doesn't always have to be dead).

> > So, please, can someone with access to the nedit website just edit ...
> 
> What I had in mind is that you change the [under development] part
> to [CVS-05-03-09], or so. 

OK, that about makes it clear that there is no "stable upstream" to
expect... I'll make a CVS snapshot one can verify, then.
Perhaps current CVS as an option (in case it will differ in future,
hopefully). This feels a bit like forking (my mpg123 maintainership
started with hosting a patch...).

> > As I said, our distro wants to give people the stable upstream default if possible.
> 
> No, your distro wants to give people something that works.

Yes and no. If it's really broken that it doesn't compile / work at
all, then yes, we want to make it work for our users.
But the main credo is the user's choice (of any optional features and
patches) -- with a minimum of default modifications.
There are enough "just works" distros out there;-)

> In big
> projects that are organized and deploy some sort of quality assurance,
> one may rely on the releases marked as stable. For many low profile
> projects the situation is different. (Take Fedora as example, they 
> don't rely on the "official" lesstif release.)

I rather draw the line between "alive" and "dead" projects, than "big"
and "low profile". mpg123 used to be in the "dead" state for some
years, mainly debian and gentoo took over with patching bugs and (few)
features for their own, possible others using that work or doing their
own share, too. Now it's "alive" again, and rather low profile... one
main developer (me) being active, plus one developler concerned with
win32/MSVC porting issues. I do stable releases, I do bugfix updates of
these... I do new stable releases after adding features and testing on
some configurations and for some time. I claim my stable releases to
earn their name - if not, then there's a bugfix release soon.

But, well, when you combine a big bit-rotting codebase with a small
developer team... stakes are high that people do changes that have side
effects they didn't think of and that they don't test for... 
> > Soon there could be noone trying anymore... nedit is already obsolete...
> 
> It wasn't only me who predicted this roughly five years ago.

So what is the message here? Actually, I notice the absence of actual
developers in this discussion (people mentioned as developers in the
nedit version info).
Does Tony have an opinion about this (making a release of current
sources, at least)?

Well, I'll try to get some working lesstif to have the nedit as useful
as it gets in its current state, but for the longer term...
... I'll have to see how to push nedit development (get into it myself?
in what spare time?),
... or to choose some other (fast) editor and add the important nedit
features it misses,
... just write my own,
... learn vim,
... get a valium addiction and return to kate?


Alrighty then,

Thomas.

PS: Joerg: Sorry for stressing your patience with this repetitive
thread... the hope doesn't want to die.
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