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This is an aside, but why did the author prepend Emacs with GNU every time? From my understanding, GNU Emacs is a specific flavor of Emacs (which is a general
by Pfhreak 10y ago
This is an aside, but why did the author prepend Emacs with GNU every time?
From my understanding, GNU Emacs is a specific flavor of Emacs (which is a general class of editor). From wikipedia, it's the most common flavor of Emacs. Is it not generally understood that Emacs implies GNU Emacs? Would it not be sufficient to introduce the article with, "... Emacs -- specifically, GNU Emacs -- ..." and then carry on with Emacs elsewhere?
It seems needless, or even pedantic, but maybe I'm missing something?
- vdnkh 10y agoWhat you're referring to as Emacs is actually GNU Emacs, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Emacs.
- ajross 10y agoIn the modern world there basically is only GNU Emacs. The only other actively maintained editor (well, there's Linus's microemacs tree too I guess) that calls itself "emacs" is XEmacs, a long-time fork of GNU Emacs. But it's been fading steadily over the past decade and at this point very few people use it or even know about it. Basically: yes, you can be unambiguous by just saying "emacs" and everyone who cares will know exactly what software you use. But for the same reason it's not really correct anymore to use "emacs" to refer to a "general class of editor". You need to be more explicit if you're invoking historical or oddball variants.
- Pfhreak 10y agoSo, why did the author make such a point of using GNU Emacs everywhere? I feel like I just read an article where the author says, "Apple's OS X" or "Microsoft Excel" over and over. Edit: Confused about downvotes too. My question comes from a genuine place of not understanding.
- pepve 10y agoMaybe he's a GNU zealot, they exist. The type to refer to Linux as GNU/Linux. ;-)