Subject: Re: bug#8220: 24.0.50; (On Windows XP) "c:\_emacs" isn't found during startup

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:42:11 +0200

> From: Juanma Barranquero <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:20:51 +0100
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>, Dani Moncayo <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
> 
> > And _emacs is a longstanding, positive feature, not something that should be
> > removed.
> 
> Not according to the docs, which clearly say that it is "for
> compatibility with older versions of Emacs".

Actually, it's for compatibility with older versions of _Windows_,
and, more importantly, for helping users migrate from DOS (which
simply doesn't allow file names that begin with a period).  That
migration is all over by now; whoever still uses DOS will never go to
Windows on the same machine.  So it's time to deprecate that old
feature, which makes documentation harder and Emacs operation
trickier.