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To: Randall R Schulz <rrschulz AT cris DOT com>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: gzip.exe as symlink breaks NTEmacs's jka-compr.el
In-Reply-To: Message from Randall R Schulz <rrschulz@cris.com>
   of "Tue, 16 Jul 2002 18:33:54 PDT." <5 DOT 1 DOT 0 DOT 14 DOT 2 DOT 20020716182754 DOT 02f3df30 AT pop3 DOT cris DOT com>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 20:50:55 -0500
From: Jon Cast <jcast AT ou DOT edu>

Randall R Schulz <rrschulz AT cris DOT com> wrote:
> Jon,

<snip>

> However, I believe that if there's a conceit being displayed here,
> it's yours.  You seem to think that because a Cygwin command comes
> within the realm of all that Emacs surveys, the Cygwin tool should
> adapt to service Emacs.

Sorry if I gave that impression.  Certainly I don't think Cygwin tools
should always adapt however far is necessary to work with Emacs.

> If Emacs does not work well in the environment in which it finds
> itself, is it the fault of that environment?  I think not.

I respectfully disagree that Emacs is ``not work[ing] will in the
environment in which it finds itself''.  The ``environment'' here is
Windows.  gzip, at the time the complaint was made, did not work well
in that environment.  Emacs does not work well in that environment.
M$ Word does not work well in that environment.  Nothing does ---
Windows is fundamentally broken.  There is no completely correct
behavior in many cases, such as this one.  However, there is less
broken behavior.  Sometimes there's an easy fix to make something work
better.  Sometimes there's a hard fix to make something work better.
If they're equally correct (as in this case), I think we should always
go with the easy fix, rather than saying ``Cygwin programs are always
right, Emacs is always wrong, fix Emacs'' or ``Emacs is always right,
Cygwin programs are always wrong, fix Cygwin''.

> As has often been said here (by the principals, not me): Cygwin is
> not Unix.

Because Cygwin cannot fix the fundamental brokenness of Windows.
Neither can Emacs.  But both can be made better.

Jon Cast

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