4 ms·

Its also a daemon that does a lot of work for me from the shell! I meta-click to capture xterm output, call dired, make it give me popup-windows to edit short

Its also a daemon that does a lot of work for me from the shell! I meta-click to capture xterm output, call dired, make it give me popup-windows to edit short scripts and long command lines, i query the feed-reader, get my backup-schedule, have it popup for debrief when new voice notes are downloaded, serve as an emergency window manager, capture into multiple bins while browsing, turn into a presentation tool, create pdf reports and write-ups, prompt me to check-in any leftovers at the end of the day, work seamlessly across my machines, provide menus to give access to files, clickable functions, org-summaries, fantastic spreadsheets .. oh wait, that's going beyond shell. so yes, it made my beard grey. big deal, i can shave. sure it not perfect, sure its infuriating, surely i'm insane for continually investing into my future while tweaking something to compound its benefits. but none of this makes emacs anything but a lisp machine -- so well loved and so close to the metal that it will be here after you and me. Call it a general purpose computing shell, not an OS, and please compare it to the living, not the dead!

rakoo 6y ago
Can you do all of those without emacs ? My point is that yes Emacs can do so many things, but 1) it's all accessible from Emacs only and 2) it uses Emacs-only components. This is fine if you live inside Emacs, but it doesn't really integrate with the rest of your system
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Emacs is your system. You can't integrate all that well in the other direction, because host OS platforms don't let software interop as well. Even the Unix family. The deep interop of course comes at the expense of security. There's no sandboxing or restrictions in Emacs world. One day somebody will release a piece of elisp malware, and a lot of people - myself included - will lose their crown jewels. But until then, we get to enjoy the only remaining relatively mainstream OS with deep interoperability.
  - rakoo 6y ago
    Actually you can interop in the Unix family, that's what ACME is doing: write specific text to specific files and the content of your editor windows change. That allows the editor to implement any command you could find elsewhere, such as indent, put the contents of a directory, display compile errors...
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I didn't realize that. I'll need to dig into ACME (and the history behind its ideas - I suspect there are many gems lost to time, like it is the case with Lisp machines). > write specific text to specific files Is that all plaintext, UNIX-style? Part of me wishes we could leave the era of unstructured text, and every tool carrying its own ad-hoc, bug-ridden, poorly specified parser and serialization logic - and send richly typed data structures (or objects) instead.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  That's kind of like asking "Can you do all the cool things Linux provides without installing UNIX?"

rakoo 6y ago

Can you do all of those without emacs ? My point is that yes Emacs can do so many things, but 1) it's all accessible from Emacs only and 2) it uses Emacs-only components. This is fine if you live inside Emacs, but it doesn't really integrate with the rest of your system

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Emacs is your system. You can't integrate all that well in the other direction, because host OS platforms don't let software interop as well. Even the Unix family. The deep interop of course comes at the expense of security. There's no sandboxing or restrictions in Emacs world. One day somebody will release a piece of elisp malware, and a lot of people - myself included - will lose their crown jewels. But until then, we get to enjoy the only remaining relatively mainstream OS with deep interoperability.
- rakoo 6y ago
  Actually you can interop in the Unix family, that's what ACME is doing: write specific text to specific files and the content of your editor windows change. That allows the editor to implement any command you could find elsewhere, such as indent, put the contents of a directory, display compile errors...
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I didn't realize that. I'll need to dig into ACME (and the history behind its ideas - I suspect there are many gems lost to time, like it is the case with Lisp machines). > write specific text to specific files Is that all plaintext, UNIX-style? Part of me wishes we could leave the era of unstructured text, and every tool carrying its own ad-hoc, bug-ridden, poorly specified parser and serialization logic - and send richly typed data structures (or objects) instead.
BeetleB 6y ago
That's kind of like asking "Can you do all the cool things Linux provides without installing UNIX?"