Emacspeak discussion list

[Victor Tsaran <vtsaran AT gmail.com>]

Lovely discussion!

:)

On Tue, Jan 9, 2024 at 2:04 PM "T.V Raman" <emacspeak AT emacspeak.net> wrote:

Correct. But he doesn't need that variable because mac-swiftmac is
already under the emacspeak/servers directory;-)

Also lessons learnt in the school of hard knocks: (see list archive
for examples)

The more "helpful" you make a system, the less people will read what
you write, and worse, they'll pay you back by using (abusing?) the
time you saved them by bad-mouthing your work on random chat rooms and
mailing lists about how difficult your software was to use :-)

Here is an example from swiftmac waiting to bite:

1. The readme.md helpfully shows you how to set it up.
2. The swiftmac server helps the user tune things to  their taste with
   a bunch of env vars.
3. The readme shows how to set these from inside Emacs with a few lisp forms
4. Clueless Luser: Will go complain in a few months about how they had to
   "write lisp code" to set this up.

"Tim Cross" (via emacspeak Mailing List) writes:
 >
 > Raman, you just beat me to it! I agree 100%
 >
 > I was reading the thread where John and Robert were trying to get John's
 > version of the swift server working and the main thing which jumped out
 > at me was the core issue seemed to be Robert's attempt to be overly
 > helpful and as a consequence has got into a situation where installation
 > has become too complicated and error prone.
 >
 > Robert, I highly recommend that instead of trying to automate and
 > simplify the installation of the switftmac server, just write up some
 > very simple installation instructions. If you really want to automate
 > part of the process, your instructions could just stipulate that the
 > user should define the environment variable EMACSPEAK_DIR which points
 > to the root of the emacspeak installation and then have your scripts use
 > that variable to determine what to do or where to place stuff. Your
 > script could even exit with an error message if the environment variable
 > does not exist.
 >
 > Tim
 >
 >
 >
 >
 > "\"T.V Raman\"" (via emacspeak Mailing List) <emacspeak AT emacspeak.net> writes:
 >
 > > I recommend you do nothing -- focus on getting the swiftmac server  to
 > > be really high-quality.
 > >
 > > 1. Right now it's in the emacspeak git repo,  which is where
 > >    bleeding-edge users live
 > > 2. So they dont need hand-holding; if they do, then they dont belong
 > >    on the bleeding edge.
 > > 3. All your make script should do is to install a symlink to the
 > >    binary it builds in  the servers directory of your checkout
 > > 4. The .servers file is checked in, so adding swiftmac to it is a
 > >    one-time operation.
 > >
 > >    Summary:
 > >
 > >    1. When given the choice between clever and simple, always pick simple.
 > >
 > >    2. Lazy programmer is a good programmer (Larry Wal, author of Perl).
 > >
 > >    3. Emacspeak in 28+ years has had a server added to it roughly once
 > >       every 5 years; the effort to add a server should reflect that.
 > >
 > >    4.  I think you would benefit from reading TAOUP by Eric Raymond
 > >
 > > Robert Melton writes:
 > >  > TV--
 > >  >
 > >  > My lisp uses that exact variable, the purpose of the bash script is just to find which
 > >  > emacs to run and call my lisp code.
 > >  >
 > >  > The purpose of this is for people using the cutting edge version of swiftmac, they can
 > >  > use "make install" to place it in the emacspeak directory.  This does not impact the
 > >  > contributed code in anyway, as it doesn't need to find the emacspeak directory, and
 > >  > does not contain this pair of finding scripts.
 > >  >
 > >  > So, if I should not use a shell script to run emacs or emacspeak to find where to
 > >  > install the swiftmac files to, how do you recommend I do it?  User input?
 > >  >
 > >  > > On Jan 9, 2024, at 13:01, T.V Raman <raman AT google.com> wrote:
 > >  > >
 > >  > > I would advice against doing this. Emacspeak is designed to work from
 > >  > > under a single directory -- rather than splattering its files around the
 > >  > > filesystem. See how variable emacspeak-directory is defined --
 > >  > > everything anchors on it. Any shell script you create will be fragile
 > >  > > because it gets more and more complex in the face of "handle different
 > >  > > use cases". This is also why emacspeak abandoned the make install rule,
 > >  > > leaving it to distros to do what they found most suitable; 
 > >  > > --
 >
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