Re: Emacs version compatibility

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Wed, Feb 01 2012, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:

> I think Ma Gnus should drop Emacs 22 compatibility, and it should also
> drop non-Mule XEmacs compatibility.

Fine with me.  Although dropping Emacs 22 probably doesn't help too
much as long as you support XEmacs 21.4.

> More controversially :-), I think 真 Gnus should also stop defining
> compatibility functions like `gnus-mark-active-p', and instead just
> start maintaining a `gnus-compat.el' library that would define functions
> like `mark-active-p' for Emacsen that don't define them.

Please don't.  It violates the Emacs coding guidelines.  Packages that
have gone that road have broken other packages in the past.
E.g. color-scheme defined `replace-in-string´[1] which broke Gnus and
emacs-jabber.

> This will make the source code more readable, I think.

I can't see that `mark-active-p' is much more readable as
`gnus-mark-active-p´.

Bye, Reiner.

[1]
,----
| From: Reiner Steib
| Subject: Bogus definition of replace-in-string in color-theme.el
|   (was: Fwd: Re: Error viewing PGP/mime signed messages)
| To: Xavier Maillard <xma // gnu.org>
| Cc: Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka <at> jpl.org>
| Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:39:51 +0100
| Message-ID: <v9d4pqj39g.fsf <at> marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>
| 
| Hi Xavier,
|
| please fix the use of `replace-in-string' in color-theme.el ASAP (see
| the problem described below and in <https://gna.org/bugs/?9494>).
| 
| No package should ever define functions and variables out of it's own
| name space:
| 
| ,----[ (info "(elisp)Coding Conventions") ]
| |    * If a package needs to define an alias or a new function for
| |      compatibility with some other version of Emacs, name it with the
| |      package prefix, not with the raw name with which it occurs in the
| |      other version.  Here is an example from Gnus, which provides many
| |      examples of such compatibility issues.
| | 
| |           (defalias 'gnus-point-at-bol
| |             (if (fboundp 'point-at-bol)
| |                 'point-at-bol
| |               'line-beginning-position))
| `----
| [ Forwarded articles from
|   <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/66521/focus=66522>
|   stripped. ]
`----
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
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