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 19:00:26 +0200

> From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:40:02 -0800
> 
> > > > 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_,
> 
> So there is a doc bug, anyway.

??? Where?  The doc doesn't say anything different.

> That was the reason for _introducing_ support for `_emacs'.  It does not at all
> follow that when that reason is no longer pertinent we should _deprecate_
> support for `_emacs'.

It does, if there are no other reasons to keep it.

> IMO `_emacs' is just as good a default name as `.emacs', if not better.  One
> could just as well argue that `.emacs' should be desupported.

One could argue that, but why would one want to, unless one wanted to
get silly.

> Certainly `.emacs' has the special property on some OS's that it is a hidden
> file.

`.emacs' is not a hidden file on any platform that I know of.  `ls'
does not show files that start with a period, but that's a "feature"
of that application, those files are not otherwise special in any way.
There's no hidden attribute on it, just because its name starts with a
period.

> `_emacs' has no such special property on any platform AFAIK.  Similarly, that
> can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Emacs is about uniformity of user experience on all platforms, and
about living up to user expectations on all platforms.  `_emacs' is a
deviation from that uniformity.  It was introduced out of necessity
(and on DOS, it still is a necessity).  But now that the necessity is
gone, it's time to correct this deviation.

> Just one user's opinion: Keep support for `_emacs' as a default init-file name;
> and extend it to any platforms where it is not already supported.

Sorry, but the converse decision was made a long time ago.