> Does it need to be popular or need more users to become maintainers? Yes. > I use emacs because I can't imagine using anything else that has half the featur

> Does it need to be popular or need more users to become maintainers? Yes. > I use emacs because I can't imagine using anything else that has half the features and is harder to extend. Maybe imagine harder or (just an idea) stop imagining and see the real world? > It's a programming environment that happens to have a text editor built in. Read the history of emacs again. It originated as a set of macros over TECO to make editing easier (hence the name emacs). Editing is always the primary function, the lisp interpreter was an afterthought. > That appeals to some folks but I can't imagine why someone interested in writing for publication would choose it over Scrivener or a word processor and why it's desirable to attract such users. Read the linked thread again. One "such user" is RMS. That pretty much has been his goal since the 90s to make Emacs a better word processor.