>> Greeting for all. >> >> Here is a version emacs-18.59-r15 in repo gentoo, I'm a little curious >> about it.Does this version have some special meaning for gentoo? Or, >> just because there are someone insist to offer maintenance for this >> version? > > I don't know, but seeing that version-number is certainly a trip down memory > lane. I'm guessing that's the last version before internationalization (8-bit > printable characters, asian byte-sequences etc.) got shoe-horned into > emacs. I'm further guessing that some people saw fit to keep it for that > reason. The first ten years after that were certainly confusing and > aggravating. These days, with UTF, I haven't though about it for a long time.
According to LLM says, 8-bit characters introduced to emacs about emacs-18.52+, as an experimental feature, and emacs-19 build a relatively stable environment to it. That align with your points... Emacs-18.x could be trace back to 1987. And it's first time to introduce gui into emacs, although the Gui may seems roughness, as said "got shoe-horned into emacs".
