4 ms·

Emacs is so fantastic, I just want it to have a UI that can compete with VS Code and IntelliJ. I also understand that its UI limitations are also part of its s

Emacs is so fantastic, I just want it to have a UI that can compete with VS Code and IntelliJ. I also understand that its UI limitations are also part of its strength, as being fundamentally text-based results in a consistent UX no matter what esoteric modes you activate. I wonder if there's a middle ground; say, by allowing for frames & windows to have "chrome" that can take up some space on their edges and allow drawing widgets via GTK or Cairo and plumbing input events back into Lisp. Then we can have stuff like sidebars, status areas, code lenses, etc. that behave like modern editors, and people that don't like it can just leave the "chrome" option disabled.

heisig 6y ago
> I wonder if there's a middle ground; I hope that McCLIM (https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/ https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/) can some day fill that role, or a project that is similar to McCLIM. I cannot imagine a better way of interacting with a computer than to have objects that can be manipulated both interactively and with Lisp code. Emacs is already close to that ideal, but I think we could do even better.
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  I wondered what would happen if you applied this philosophy to a game engine. Imagine Unity, but with the ability to open a REPL in-game and run all of your code interactively. I managed to accomplish this somewhat with Lua. Designing the engine so that all the cool things like creating and equipping items, generating maps, etc. are in public APIs you can use interactively has given me a lot of power. I'm not sure if the benefits offset the maintainability tradeoff, but I'm somehow continually excited to sit down and mess around with it. Taken as a single-user experience, being the only person to understand the system and write more code, it is almost a dream come true.
  - ohmree 6y ago
    Arcadia seems like what you described. https://github.com/arcadia-unity/arcadia https://github.com/arcadia-unity/arcadia
  - Procrastes 6y ago
    Also see: Show HN: Real-time multiplayer games with cubes. Early feedback on dev docs?[1] 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26109153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26109153
  - masijo 6y ago
    https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl https://youtu.be/6pMyhrDcMzw https://youtu.be/6pMyhrDcMzw
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Then we can have stuff like sidebars, status areas, code lenses, etc. that behave like modern editors What's stopping you from doing that in emacs now? That sounds like a bunch of stuff we can already have?
- sedachv 6y ago
  All of that has been around for a quarter of a century (since XEmacs and GNU Emacs 21 at least). See CEDET for an example: http://cedet.sourceforge.net/ http://cedet.sourceforge.net/ CodeLens is just some text properties and tool-tips/pop-ups.
egh 6y ago
This is what lsp-mode does https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode/blob/master/examples/head.png https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode/blob/master/examples/h...
silly-silly 6y ago
There is no reason you can't do this now, Inter process communication is a thing.

heisig 6y ago

> I wonder if there's a middle ground; I hope that McCLIM (https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/ https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/) can some day fill that role, or a project that is similar to McCLIM. I cannot imagine a better way of interacting with a computer than to have objects that can be manipulated both interactively and with Lisp code. Emacs is already close to that ideal, but I think we could do even better.

nonbirithm 6y ago
I wondered what would happen if you applied this philosophy to a game engine. Imagine Unity, but with the ability to open a REPL in-game and run all of your code interactively. I managed to accomplish this somewhat with Lua. Designing the engine so that all the cool things like creating and equipping items, generating maps, etc. are in public APIs you can use interactively has given me a lot of power. I'm not sure if the benefits offset the maintainability tradeoff, but I'm somehow continually excited to sit down and mess around with it. Taken as a single-user experience, being the only person to understand the system and write more code, it is almost a dream come true.
- ohmree 6y ago
  Arcadia seems like what you described. https://github.com/arcadia-unity/arcadia https://github.com/arcadia-unity/arcadia
- Procrastes 6y ago
  Also see: Show HN: Real-time multiplayer games with cubes. Early feedback on dev docs?[1] 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26109153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26109153
- masijo 6y ago
  https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl https://youtu.be/6pMyhrDcMzw https://youtu.be/6pMyhrDcMzw

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> Then we can have stuff like sidebars, status areas, code lenses, etc. that behave like modern editors What's stopping you from doing that in emacs now? That sounds like a bunch of stuff we can already have?

sedachv 6y ago
All of that has been around for a quarter of a century (since XEmacs and GNU Emacs 21 at least). See CEDET for an example: http://cedet.sourceforge.net/ http://cedet.sourceforge.net/ CodeLens is just some text properties and tool-tips/pop-ups.

egh 6y ago

This is what lsp-mode does https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode/blob/master/examples/head.png https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode/blob/master/examples/h...

silly-silly 6y ago

There is no reason you can't do this now, Inter process communication is a thing.