Subject: Re: bug#70784: Abolish string resizing

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2024 14:26:48 +0300

> Cc: [email-masked], Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
> Date: Mon, 06 May 2024 08:53:17 +0800
> From:  Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <[email-masked]>
> 
> Is it only I who am tired of these proposals for complete upheavals
> that, somehow, Emacs has fared just fine without, for generations past?

If we "get tired" of hearing such proposals, how can we ensure any
significant progress in Emacs, which is a major contributor to its
viability for years to come?

It's okay to discuss such proposals and object to some or all of them,
provided you have good reasons for the objections, but suggestions to
block such proposals up front are counter-productive and will
eventually hamper Emacs's future, IMNSHO.

> It's precisely this attitude that begins to inspire thoughts of
> departure.  Backwards-compatibility is an obligation that cannot be
> evaded by means of warnings, which instead serve to annoy and antagonize
> users, whose only wish is that Emacs leave them in peace.

We are not going to abandon backward-compatibility considerations.
But refusing to discuss significant changes just because they have
compatibility issues is throwing the proverbial baby with the
bathwater.  Refusing changes is of course 110% backward-compatible,
but it has many disadvantages, to say the least.  Instead, we should
see how to keep compatibility, to the extent that we consider it
important, without blocking changes which could potentially help us
adopting new technologies and improving performance.