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That, and while emacs has a reputation as being the ur-editor from which all text editing innovation stems, the reality is quite the opposite. It's stagnant and

That, and while emacs has a reputation as being the ur-editor from which all text editing innovation stems, the reality is quite the opposite. It's stagnant and hasn't been the center of text editing innovation for at least the last decade, and probably quite a bit longer before that. It was a particularly bad string of basic package incompatibilities that woke me from my emacs evangelist phase, but it was the realization that emacs was downstream from TextMate on several non-GUI-centric features that made me realize the entire "platform" value prop was bunk. While emacs might be excused for missing tectonic shifts (e.g. away from CLI and towards GUI), entirely text-centric features like multiple arbitrary simultaneous caret, Smith Waterman quick file/action search, powerful template substitution, parsing-based syntax highlighting, navigation, and refactor tools all developed and matured outside of emacs and then slowly and painfully found their way back in, not the other way around. Emacs was supposed to be a fertile platform for text editing innovation, but history didn't work out that way, even if you ignore the trend towards GUI innovation, which you shouldn't.

michaelmrose 7y ago
Emacs is a gui app. You can have if you like a tool bar. A menu-bar, tabs, split windows. If you want something slightly more like a traditional gui emacs application framework enables bidirectional communication with QT applications running in emacs frames. Personally I use it to render HTML mail inside emacs with what amounts to embedded chrome.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  As far as I am aware it still isn't as GUI oriented as ZWEI used to be.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    What gui elements do you find lacking I'm not familiar with ZWEI
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Basically think of using Emacs like a Jupyter Netbook, including the visualizations. Back when I was still into Emacs (2004) this wasn't possible.
      - didibus 7y ago
        That's possible now, you can render images inside buffers.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Render images alone is too basic, that was already possible in XEmacs. I really meant like Jupyter Notebooks, interactive images and data structures, that you can click on and change to your pleasure and plug into Elisp code to be called back.
        throwanem 7y ago
        Org-babel does this, and is less limited in language choice than Jupyter; you can use any language for which a binding exists (there are many, including Python) in any code block, irrespective of what you use in any other. The interfaces are pretty clean, and you can have inline images, although I think not interactive ones. Data structures are expressible in code or in tables. I don't use it much these days, having less need for that sort of highly interactive exploratory analysis, but I did find Jupyter highly limiting by comparison.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Thanks, I will have a look into it, if anything at least not to spread misinformation.
        diffeomorphism 7y ago
        You can integrate jupyter notebooks into emacs so in particular everything "like jupyter" and more.
- slightwinder 7y ago
  Emacs is as much of an GUI-App as Window notepad is an editor. They both have the traits what justify to call them, but also are both on the absolute bottom-line in terms of ability. The menubar is stuck in the 90s, the toolbar very very basic, even for the 90s. Window-Splitting is not even an GUI-feature and very basic. Only the tabs are somewhat modern, but also simple. COmpared to a modern GUI, emacs has barely anything that justify calling it GUI. Especially as most of those features are available in the terminal-version too AFAIK. > If you want something slightly more like a traditional gui emacs application framework enables bidirectional communication with QT applications running in emacs frames. Calling external apps doesn't make it a better GUI. And amount of connection between emacs and Qt is very limited. This is just a crutch to fill missing areas in emacs abilities.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > The menubar is stuck in the 90s, the toolbar very very basic, even for the 90s. Window-Splitting is not even an GUI-feature and very basic. Only the tabs are somewhat modern, but also simple You're confusing GUI with Windows GUI API. That's like complaining that a game like Stellaris barely has any GUI, because if you force it to run in windowed mode, then maybe you'll get a context menu dropping down from the application icon in the top left corner of the window. Emacs absolutely has a GUI. It happens to be drawn almost entirely from characters, but it's a GUI. It uses the language, can display pixel graphics (in GUI-app mode), and even supports pointer devices. The fact that 99% of that GUI is a TUI is actually a benefit (you can also use it from terminal). And with third-party plugins, it has all the sophisticated GUI controls you could dream of, except unlike in traditional GUIs, they're fully interoperable. A good comparison may be that Emacs is the OS that ships with a tiling WM, and most people unaware of that just use it to tile notepad windows.
    - slightwinder 7y ago
      > Emacs absolutely has a GUI. It happens to be drawn almost entirely from characters, That's a TUI, not a GUI. GUI means Graphic, not text, even if it's spatial. > And with third-party plugins, it has all the sophisticated GUI controls you could dream of No, it has not. I've tried enough of them to know how poor they work.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
Have you tried spacemacs?
random_cynic 7y ago
Completely agree. There hasn't been any innovation from Emacs since the 90s. Instead more and more effort has gone into adding useless capabilities into emacs such as mail/news readers, organization systems and even window managers. There's some truth to the statement that "Emacs is an operating system lacking a decent text editor" except that even as an operating system it sucks.

michaelmrose 7y ago

Emacs is a gui app. You can have if you like a tool bar. A menu-bar, tabs, split windows. If you want something slightly more like a traditional gui emacs application framework enables bidirectional communication with QT applications running in emacs frames. Personally I use it to render HTML mail inside emacs with what amounts to embedded chrome.

pjmlp 7y ago
As far as I am aware it still isn't as GUI oriented as ZWEI used to be.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  What gui elements do you find lacking I'm not familiar with ZWEI
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Basically think of using Emacs like a Jupyter Netbook, including the visualizations. Back when I was still into Emacs (2004) this wasn't possible.
    - didibus 7y ago
      That's possible now, you can render images inside buffers.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Render images alone is too basic, that was already possible in XEmacs. I really meant like Jupyter Notebooks, interactive images and data structures, that you can click on and change to your pleasure and plug into Elisp code to be called back.
        throwanem 7y ago
        Org-babel does this, and is less limited in language choice than Jupyter; you can use any language for which a binding exists (there are many, including Python) in any code block, irrespective of what you use in any other. The interfaces are pretty clean, and you can have inline images, although I think not interactive ones. Data structures are expressible in code or in tables. I don't use it much these days, having less need for that sort of highly interactive exploratory analysis, but I did find Jupyter highly limiting by comparison.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Thanks, I will have a look into it, if anything at least not to spread misinformation.
        diffeomorphism 7y ago
        You can integrate jupyter notebooks into emacs so in particular everything "like jupyter" and more.
slightwinder 7y ago
Emacs is as much of an GUI-App as Window notepad is an editor. They both have the traits what justify to call them, but also are both on the absolute bottom-line in terms of ability. The menubar is stuck in the 90s, the toolbar very very basic, even for the 90s. Window-Splitting is not even an GUI-feature and very basic. Only the tabs are somewhat modern, but also simple. COmpared to a modern GUI, emacs has barely anything that justify calling it GUI. Especially as most of those features are available in the terminal-version too AFAIK. > If you want something slightly more like a traditional gui emacs application framework enables bidirectional communication with QT applications running in emacs frames. Calling external apps doesn't make it a better GUI. And amount of connection between emacs and Qt is very limited. This is just a crutch to fill missing areas in emacs abilities.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > The menubar is stuck in the 90s, the toolbar very very basic, even for the 90s. Window-Splitting is not even an GUI-feature and very basic. Only the tabs are somewhat modern, but also simple You're confusing GUI with Windows GUI API. That's like complaining that a game like Stellaris barely has any GUI, because if you force it to run in windowed mode, then maybe you'll get a context menu dropping down from the application icon in the top left corner of the window. Emacs absolutely has a GUI. It happens to be drawn almost entirely from characters, but it's a GUI. It uses the language, can display pixel graphics (in GUI-app mode), and even supports pointer devices. The fact that 99% of that GUI is a TUI is actually a benefit (you can also use it from terminal). And with third-party plugins, it has all the sophisticated GUI controls you could dream of, except unlike in traditional GUIs, they're fully interoperable. A good comparison may be that Emacs is the OS that ships with a tiling WM, and most people unaware of that just use it to tile notepad windows.
  - slightwinder 7y ago
    > Emacs absolutely has a GUI. It happens to be drawn almost entirely from characters, That's a TUI, not a GUI. GUI means Graphic, not text, even if it's spatial. > And with third-party plugins, it has all the sophisticated GUI controls you could dream of No, it has not. I've tried enough of them to know how poor they work.

AlexCoventry 7y ago

Have you tried spacemacs?

random_cynic 7y ago

Completely agree. There hasn't been any innovation from Emacs since the 90s. Instead more and more effort has gone into adding useless capabilities into emacs such as mail/news readers, organization systems and even window managers. There's some truth to the statement that "Emacs is an operating system lacking a decent text editor" except that even as an operating system it sucks.