Wes Hardaker <wes@hardakers.net> writes:

> So, recent changes to the gnus cvs directory replaced the smiley.el
> file I originally wrote (and billions of people hacked afterwords)
> with a new one that is a "re-written, simplified version" of the
> original.

That sounds like commentary from my smiley-ems.el (for Emacs 21).

> All fine and dandy except that the simplification means
> loss of functionality (the ability to toggle the smileys via a menu,
> pop-up help text, etc).

I provided toggling and help-echo support.

> (I won't get into why someone thought a rewrite was easier than
> sending me a form and asking "hey, we finally need this filled out to
> get it distributed with the main emacs base".

The commentary mentions assignment problems about which I sent mail,
though I don't remember the response(s).  At least, as above, it was
hacked on by others and the image provenance was unclear.  Apart from
assignment issues, the code in smiley.el basically wasn't useful for
Emacs.  Writing smiley-ems as a simple demo/test for Emacs 21 was
clearly more efficient than doing essentially the same amount of
programming plus chasing paperwork.

Note in this connexion that writing common image code is messy since
XEmacs maintainers didn't cooperate on a common API and the XEmacs API
is poorly documented.  Also the change recording in XEmacs and Gnus
has often made it difficult or impossible to figure out the copyright
status of code.  [I hope code isn't still being installed in Gnus
without assignments.]

Ob-useful ☺: