I think one question acme tries to answer is “how do you have a Unix-like interface to a computer that is more than a text terminal.” Look at emacs where you ha

I think one question acme tries to answer is “how do you have a Unix-like interface to a computer that is more than a text terminal.” Look at emacs where you have this great text-based environment but it is full of all sorts of weird things and everything is all controlled through an (admittedly great) internal programming language. Sure it can run external programs (simple with M-! or more complicatedly with process filters). Compare to vim which makes some claims to be more unixy but really that just means it does less and has basically no more gui than in a terminal. It still operates through its own internal editing language. In acme, one of the primary operations is to execute, and one easily executed normal Unix commands. More complicated programs can interact with acme through the virtual file system it presents.