GNU bug report logs - #57412
Could we make linum.el obsolete?

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From: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
To: Colin Baxter <m43cap <at> yandex.com>
Cc: 57412 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov <at> yandex.ru>
Subject: bug#57412: Could we make linum.el obsolete?
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:14:40 -0400

Colin Baxter [2022-08-26 20:00:40] wrote:
> Yes, I understand that and agree. From my perspective, I am disappointed
> that candidates for obsolescence seem to be chosen from libraries that
> are useful and not from morse, zone and the like.

Those that are useful but suffer from corner-case problems due to the
underlying design are bound to fall into this trap: if they weren't
very useful, noone would bother to reimplement them to fix those
corner cases but since the problems stem from the underlying approach,
the fix requires a significant rewrite which inevitably leads to
a slightly different featureset.

The purpose of obsoleting a library like `nlinum.el` is to help/encourage
people to move to the better options out there (and sometimes also to
discover important use-cases not yet covered by the new code).

The maintenance cost of `nlinum.el` isn't very high, but there's a cost
for users of having to choose between various options, none of which is
a strict superset of the other.


        Stefan

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