5 ms·

Advantages of everything-is-text

38 points by llambda 15y ago

blacksqr 15y ago
Yet ironically the author of emacs virulently despises Tcl, which is founded on precisely the same concept.
- tadfisher 15y ago
  I can see legitimate reasons why you'd want your text editor to display and manipulate everything as text but not want your programming language to be limited to the same.
- xyzzyz 15y ago
  The argument for "everything-is-text" approach in Emacs interface is that the text is easy to work with and the possibilities are wide -- in this case for human. This is precisely the same argument for the choice of Lisp as a programming language the Emacs is based on -- the Lisp code is again easy to work with and gives a programmer lots of freedom, but it's easier for programs to work with S-expressions than text. In other words, in the realm of code, the equivalent of "text" is "data structure".
- bch 15y ago
  I don't think Stallman despised Tcl because of its EIAS (Everything is a String) philosophy. He was wary of the Tcl relationship (at that time) with Sun Microsystems, and Stallman was a longtime Lisper anyway; I wouldn't be surprised if his opinion was that everything outside of Lisp sucked. EIAS is a powerful concept, though, which with Tcl's conceptually simple rules allow it to be homoiconic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconic) and allow for some interesting and _pleasant_ programming. To head off one common misconception of EIAS, Tcl does not actually internally represent its code only as strings. It byte-compiles. Pure string-only parsing was replaced with byte-compiled code in 1997.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
heyrhett 15y ago
Can someone please explain why "John D Cook"'s blog makes the front page so often? I see that he has a large boat. Who is his target audience here? I have been using emacs for over 10 years, and this is possibly one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard of for someone to try emacs.
- jamesrcole 15y ago
  Re: the large boat, I imagine that's a photo of (a replica of) The Endeavour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour), sailed by Captain Cook. Given that The Endeavour is both the blog's and the image's name, and that the blog author's surname is Cook.
gcb 15y ago
Take a look in plan9 and Sam/acme if you really want to extrapolate on everything is text.
- phren0logy 15y ago
  Is there a port of it you'd recommend looking at? The only ones I've found look abandoned (Plan9 from User Space, and Acme Stand Alone Complex).
  - dexen 15y ago
    Plan 9 from User Space is active; it both tracks mainline Plan 9 distribution and includes own improvements. I'm using it daily, both at work and privately; I especially love using Acme over networked X11 protocol -- great performance for a GUI app. Go see for yourself: http://code.swtch.com/plan9port/changesets http://code.swtch.com/plan9port/changesets
    - phren0logy 15y ago
      Huh, I stand corrected. Thanks, looking forward to playing with it.
g3orge 15y ago
in other words: UNIX

38 points by llambda 15y ago

blacksqr 15y ago

Yet ironically the author of emacs virulently despises Tcl, which is founded on precisely the same concept.

tadfisher 15y ago
I can see legitimate reasons why you'd want your text editor to display and manipulate everything as text but not want your programming language to be limited to the same.
xyzzyz 15y ago
The argument for "everything-is-text" approach in Emacs interface is that the text is easy to work with and the possibilities are wide -- in this case for human. This is precisely the same argument for the choice of Lisp as a programming language the Emacs is based on -- the Lisp code is again easy to work with and gives a programmer lots of freedom, but it's easier for programs to work with S-expressions than text. In other words, in the realm of code, the equivalent of "text" is "data structure".
bch 15y ago
I don't think Stallman despised Tcl because of its EIAS (Everything is a String) philosophy. He was wary of the Tcl relationship (at that time) with Sun Microsystems, and Stallman was a longtime Lisper anyway; I wouldn't be surprised if his opinion was that everything outside of Lisp sucked. EIAS is a powerful concept, though, which with Tcl's conceptually simple rules allow it to be homoiconic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconic) and allow for some interesting and _pleasant_ programming. To head off one common misconception of EIAS, Tcl does not actually internally represent its code only as strings. It byte-compiles. Pure string-only parsing was replaced with byte-compiled code in 1997.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

heyrhett 15y ago

Can someone please explain why "John D Cook"'s blog makes the front page so often? I see that he has a large boat. Who is his target audience here? I have been using emacs for over 10 years, and this is possibly one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard of for someone to try emacs.

jamesrcole 15y ago
Re: the large boat, I imagine that's a photo of (a replica of) The Endeavour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour), sailed by Captain Cook. Given that The Endeavour is both the blog's and the image's name, and that the blog author's surname is Cook.

gcb 15y ago

Take a look in plan9 and Sam/acme if you really want to extrapolate on everything is text.

phren0logy 15y ago
Is there a port of it you'd recommend looking at? The only ones I've found look abandoned (Plan9 from User Space, and Acme Stand Alone Complex).
- dexen 15y ago
  Plan 9 from User Space is active; it both tracks mainline Plan 9 distribution and includes own improvements. I'm using it daily, both at work and privately; I especially love using Acme over networked X11 protocol -- great performance for a GUI app. Go see for yourself: http://code.swtch.com/plan9port/changesets http://code.swtch.com/plan9port/changesets
  - phren0logy 15y ago
    Huh, I stand corrected. Thanks, looking forward to playing with it.

g3orge 15y ago

in other words: UNIX