Name: Anonymous 2006-08-09 15:14
The truth about emacs
It's a text editor with a scripting language backend that lets you do anything with the editor.
That's it.
Since Emacs have been around 30 years, its age has allowed people to write endless scripts, and develop an amazing system of a few hundred shortcut keys to access those scripts.
30 years has also led to its great shortcomings. Emacs scripting library has mutated into a monster that must be tamed before you can really wield the power of this beast. In addition, it uses outdated terms (yank, pull, M-key), and, while its scripting language (Lisp) showed promise at the time, it is now hardly seen in practice. And to top it all off, the shortcut keys seem to have been chosen arbitrarily by a bunch of hackers who, while great programmers, had never heard of such things as 'ergonomics' or 'user friendliness'.
Given my initial description of what Emacs are, I think it's safe to say that any text editor that meets that criterion is an Emacs.
Here would be one example:
http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/pythonpaper.html
No one should be surprised that Emacs' relic scripting language is one of the reasons it flounders. Donald Knuth addressed this same problem in his "The Art of Computer Programming" book. He wanted his work to last, so he didn't want to choose any language of the day to use for code examples, because in a few years it would be obsolete.
There isn't going to be any timeless language to use for the backend of Emacs. So why not do something like the Wily editor is doing: allow the use of any scripting language.
Emacs is a dying program. It was never designed to handle a lifespan of 30 years. Maybe this new Wily editor will be. It's really not that hard to top Emacs. I'm just surprised no one has bothered to do so in the last 3 decades.
It's a text editor with a scripting language backend that lets you do anything with the editor.
That's it.
Since Emacs have been around 30 years, its age has allowed people to write endless scripts, and develop an amazing system of a few hundred shortcut keys to access those scripts.
30 years has also led to its great shortcomings. Emacs scripting library has mutated into a monster that must be tamed before you can really wield the power of this beast. In addition, it uses outdated terms (yank, pull, M-key), and, while its scripting language (Lisp) showed promise at the time, it is now hardly seen in practice. And to top it all off, the shortcut keys seem to have been chosen arbitrarily by a bunch of hackers who, while great programmers, had never heard of such things as 'ergonomics' or 'user friendliness'.
Given my initial description of what Emacs are, I think it's safe to say that any text editor that meets that criterion is an Emacs.
Here would be one example:
http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/pythonpaper.html
No one should be surprised that Emacs' relic scripting language is one of the reasons it flounders. Donald Knuth addressed this same problem in his "The Art of Computer Programming" book. He wanted his work to last, so he didn't want to choose any language of the day to use for code examples, because in a few years it would be obsolete.
There isn't going to be any timeless language to use for the backend of Emacs. So why not do something like the Wily editor is doing: allow the use of any scripting language.
Emacs is a dying program. It was never designed to handle a lifespan of 30 years. Maybe this new Wily editor will be. It's really not that hard to top Emacs. I'm just surprised no one has bothered to do so in the last 3 decades.