Why isn't emacs installed by default

[Rahul Sundaram]

Andrew Haley wrote:
> Nicolas Mailhot writes:
>  > 
>  > Le Lun 4 juin 2007 14:12, Andrew Haley a écrit :
>  > > Nicolas Mailhot writes:
>  > >  >
>  > >  > Le Lun 4 juin 2007 13:28, Andrew Haley a écrit :
>  > >
>  > > From a user's point of view, the important thing is the extent to
>  > > which using the current desktop font infrastructure, using one of the
>  > > main GUI desktop toolkits, etc. would enhance emacs.
>  > 
>  > I won't enter in this argument.
> 
> Well, it's the only argument that is at all persuasive from the point
> of view of an upstream maintainer.  "Use this cool stuff and emacs
> will be better, because ..." is a hell of a lot more persuasive than
> "Use this cool stuff or we'll kill emacs."

Nobody killed emacs. It is in the repository. Just not installed by 
default and hasn't been for a long time now. XMMS was dropped before 
from the default set because it was relying on GTK1 which made it the 
only default desktop application that didn't support the internalization 
and accessibility features. If applications don't get the improvements 
users expect in modern desktop sometime or the other these applications 
are likely to be sidelined. Not saying that Emacs is in such a position 
now though.

Rahul