From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/24588 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Edward J. Sabol" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: OFFTOPIC: Where do you get your elisp? Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 15:36:10 -0400 (EDT) Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <199908031936.PAA85527@alderaan.gsfc.nasa.gov> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035162128 9519 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 01:02:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:02:08 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Return-Path: Original-Received: from farabi.math.uh.edu (farabi.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.57]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA09889 for ; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 15:40:26 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by farabi.math.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAB18648; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 14:36:42 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Tue, 03 Aug 1999 14:37:41 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (root@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA09056 for ; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 14:37:31 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from alderaan.gsfc.nasa.gov (alderaan.gsfc.nasa.gov [128.183.16.213]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA09817 for ; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 15:36:15 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: (from sabol@localhost) by alderaan.gsfc.nasa.gov (980427.SGI.8.8.8/980728.SGI.AUTOCF) id PAA85527; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 15:36:10 -0400 (EDT) Original-To: dave@bfnet.com In-reply-to: (dave@bfnet.com) Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:24588 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:24588 I think the current state of elisp archiving is pretty sad. The elisp user *and* developer communities badly need the equivalent of Perl's impressive Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (or CPAN). To answer your question, I get my elisp almost exclusively from the gnu.emacs.sources newsgroup, but I'm always missing articles since I don't have time to read news as often as I would like and my news server expires articles too quickly for my reading habits. (Does anyone know of a searchable archive for gnu.emacs.sources on the Web?) I see a lot of novice elisp developers implementing the same features that others have implemented in the past. Countless times I have seen someone post to gnu.emacs.sources some elisp code that they just spent days or weeks writing only to have someone followup and tell them that somebody else wrote the same thing two or more years ago. The result is that a lot of elisp development energy is wasted because there is no good archive of elisp packages! If elisp code isn't incorporated into Emacs (or XEmacs) at some point, the code is often forgotten and dies, especially if the author doesn't routinely post updates and/or continue enhancing it. I think it's a major problem for the Emacs community, but nobody else seems to care. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or resources to fix it.