Re: Patch for %F in the statusline

["John E. Davis" <davis>]

SANGOI DINO <SANGOID@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I prefer to post these patches here, maybe somebody else has a better idea,
>or find some issues, before it goes to the standard distribution. 
>Maybe John will tell us what he prefers.

Many times I prefer to see patches first made available to others for
testing before they are given to me.  That way the patches get tested
and it also gives me an opportunity see how the new feature is
received by others.  Otherwise, I have to make a judgement call about
how useful such a patch would be.  Of course unless the patch is sent
directly to me at some point, there is the possibility that I will
forget about it.

Regarding this particular patch, perhaps it should be rewritten to
"kick-in" only when the window size exceeds some maximum value.  I
personally cannot see using it for the standard window size of 80
columns that I use, but I can imagine others using it for sizes of 200
columns or more.

About patches in general: Right now in my jed-patches folder, I have
over 80 patches pending.  I always look at the patches and make some
judgement call about the general usefulness of the patch and how the
feature fits in with future versions of jed (as well as with the next
release of the slang library).  For example, several years ago I was
given patches for the old-style menus.  Since I knew that those menus
were going to go away in a future release, I did not include the
patches.  If a patch fixes some bug, I generally add it to the next
release.  If I think that the patch could be better implemented in
slang, then I put the patch on hold.  Sometimes implementing it in this
way may require addition editor hooks.  As an example of this, several
years ago a patch was given to me implementing support for compressed
files.  However, I felt that this would be better handled by slang with
the appropriate hooks.  It took a while but the hooks were eventually
added and now jed has support for compressed files.  Finally, often I
like the feature that the patch tries to achieve but do not like the
implementation or feel that it is not general enough for all users.

I hope the above rambling gives some insight into how I deal with
patches and some of the issues I have to face.

--John

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