Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!oliveb!sun!thetone!swilson
From: swilson%thetone@Sun.COM (Scott Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Question about Bison
Message-ID: <72184@sun.uucp>
Date: 9 Oct 88 00:40:42 GMT
References: <8246@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <3889@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: swilson@sun.UUCP (Scott Wilson)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 39

>Unfortunately, Richard Stallman
>is pretty dogmatically in favor of ...

Richard Stallman dogmatic?  Shirely, you jest!  From the GNU Emacs
manual:

        I strongly recommend that you try out the indentation style
        produced by the standard settings of these variables, together
        with putting open braces on separate lines.  You can see how
        it looks in all the C source files of GNU Emacs.

Geez, the man wants to tell me how to indent my code!  BTW, I looked
at the source, and I don't think a two character indent is sufficient;
the code, in my opinion, was hard to read.  The point, though, is that
it's a matter of personal taste.

I had a rather lengthy mail discussion with Mr. Stallman regarding the
use of constructs of dubious portability in GNU code.  My argument was
that if the FSF really wanted to do computer users a favor by giving
away free code then they should produce code that is more likely to
succeed in compiling and running on a greater number of machines.  His
reply was that GNU (the OS) will support all the features that current
GNU code exploits.  His ultimate goal is a complete system and he would
rather spend time on making that a reality than worrying about how
portable bison is to the Mac.  He does have a point, but somehow I get
the feeling that FSF produces software that works only in environments
deemed worthy by the authors.  My impression is that spreading their
computing philosophy is more important than giving users a choice.

But, alas, I have to give them credit.  Their useful software produced
to money charged ratio is infinitely larger than mine.  Please direct
all flames by e-mail to me where they will be promtly deleted, I'm sure
this newsgroup cares not too much.


--
Scott Wilson		arpa: swilson@sun.com
Sun Microsystems	uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA