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This is going to be a hard sell: > Neomacs relies on Electron... Tired flamebait aside, this looks cool. I'd like to know how it's different from Lem and Emac

by Y_Y 2y ago

This is going to be a hard sell: > Neomacs relies on Electron... Tired flamebait aside, this looks cool. I'd like to know how it's different from Lem and Emacs-NG. I gladly welcome "macsen" and note some other great programs in the tradition: Emacs (OG) Genera (OS) Climacs (CL) TeXmacs (DTP) Honorable mention: Plan 9, Pharo, gforth. Anything I missed? This store or using the computer is vastly more satisfying than rigid, compiled button-driven interfaces and makes me feel like my computer is much more a "bicycle for the mind" than a on-rails haunted house ride for the mind. I'm using Spacemacs with EXWM as my "desktop" in Guix these days and loving it.

kscarlet 2y ago
> how it's different from Lem and Emacs-NG. Neomacs is not a GNU Emacs clone. It changes the fundamental edited model from text (with text properties) to structured document (i.e. trees). Things done with ASCII art hack and things impossible in Emacs can now be done effortlessly in Neomacs. > > Neomacs relies on Electron I wish not either, but it's the pragmatic option for now, to make things work. There's no reason someone couldn’t port it to, say Tauri, or even build a browser engine in Lisp, given enough effort. > some other great programs Yes! They inspire me a lot and I learn from them!
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Could it not use a linked web view via dll to webkit on Linux (and Mac) and embedded Edge webview on Windows? Why the whole electron bundling?
  - kscarlet 2y ago
    Probably, it's just someone made a pretty good Electron binding for Common Lisp (https://github.com/cermaic/ceramic https://github.com/cermaic/ceramic), so I used it instead of inventing my own wheel.
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  > There's no reason someone couldn’t port it to, say Tauri, or even build a browser engine in Lisp Have there ever been browser engines done in Lisp? Don't think I've seen anything like that. Nyxt springs to mind, I wonder if they're eventually planning to attempt one.
lejalv 2y ago
Kudos for remembering TeXmacs, for some reason it seems to be seldomly know outside of math-heavy STEM circles although it is a Scheme-programmable structured tree editor worth checking out for general document authoring. TeXmacs does technical typesetting with similar or better quality than LaTeX (and it does not use LaTeX behind the scenes for typesetting, unlike LyX) and keeps a live representation of the document as a tree that you can query and modify (e.g. using PEGs). It is also fully WYSIWYG (unlike, say, Typst). Using the graphical mode one can freely position math and images and text on slides with perfect typesetting. And the switch-and-fold environments let you build trees of visibility for arbitrary parts of the document (the most obvious application being having exercises that can be switched to show the solutions). What is more: in TeXmacs one can be enforce a certain degree (to the extent permitted by the ambiguity in mathematical notation) of semantics for math, so that good-looking expressions can be directly sent to a computer algebra system (CAS) for evaluation (and printed back in a way you can read). So TeXmacs can interface to CASs and in general any programming language. In fact, thinking about code editing, am not sure why TeXmacs could not, in principle, be the Scheme-based Emacs that some people have dreamt of (cf. the defunct Guilemacs effort, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304457). Maybe it will: a dedicated community of hackers led by Darcy is doing experiments in this direction in a friendly fork under the name “Mogan” - https://mogan.app/guide/what-is-mogan.html https://mogan.app/guide/what-is-mogan.html, although I have no idea what are the plans for Mogan Code. TeXmacs does not use Electron, so while it does import HTML reasonably, it won't render websites in their full glory. But there was a recent job offer for somebody to work on improving the rudimentary capabilities for collaborative editing, so it might end up offering an alternative to Overleaf.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  Honestly I haven't used TeXmacs in a while. I was an avid user of LyX for a long time, until Overleaf enshittified its way into everything and became mandatory for at least the collaborations I was involved in. TeXmacs always appealed to me, but I couldn't manage to get it to tangle out source code the way I wanted and ended up falling back on lesser tools like Jupyter for typesetting-CAS-code interaction. I really should revisit it, it's definitely an underappreciated gem. I'm also delighted to note that Guile Emacs is scheduled to rise from its grave next week and I'm quite optimistic about its success this time round. Robin Templeton is apparently back working on it and they'll give a talk at Emacsconf: https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/guile/ https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/guile/
sourcepluck 2y ago
https://project-mage.org/ https://project-mage.org/ deserves a mention, but it's at the prototypical idea stage for now as far as I know, although the guy seems serious and sincere.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  I was keen to see the outcome of that, but looking at the most recent updates it looks like the developer has been pulled away by burnout or some other external cause and progress has dried up.
  - sourcepluck 2y ago
    Had a look for updates there - it seems to be in stasis yes. Fingers crossed that it's only temporary, and that the developer is doing alright. He was a very exciting writer anyway, I found.

by Y_Y 2y ago

kscarlet 2y ago

> how it's different from Lem and Emacs-NG. Neomacs is not a GNU Emacs clone. It changes the fundamental edited model from text (with text properties) to structured document (i.e. trees). Things done with ASCII art hack and things impossible in Emacs can now be done effortlessly in Neomacs. > > Neomacs relies on Electron I wish not either, but it's the pragmatic option for now, to make things work. There's no reason someone couldn’t port it to, say Tauri, or even build a browser engine in Lisp, given enough effort. > some other great programs Yes! They inspire me a lot and I learn from them!

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Could it not use a linked web view via dll to webkit on Linux (and Mac) and embedded Edge webview on Windows? Why the whole electron bundling?
- kscarlet 2y ago
  Probably, it's just someone made a pretty good Electron binding for Common Lisp (https://github.com/cermaic/ceramic https://github.com/cermaic/ceramic), so I used it instead of inventing my own wheel.
sourcepluck 2y ago
> There's no reason someone couldn’t port it to, say Tauri, or even build a browser engine in Lisp Have there ever been browser engines done in Lisp? Don't think I've seen anything like that. Nyxt springs to mind, I wonder if they're eventually planning to attempt one.

lejalv 2y ago

Kudos for remembering TeXmacs, for some reason it seems to be seldomly know outside of math-heavy STEM circles although it is a Scheme-programmable structured tree editor worth checking out for general document authoring. TeXmacs does technical typesetting with similar or better quality than LaTeX (and it does not use LaTeX behind the scenes for typesetting, unlike LyX) and keeps a live representation of the document as a tree that you can query and modify (e.g. using PEGs). It is also fully WYSIWYG (unlike, say, Typst). Using the graphical mode one can freely position math and images and text on slides with perfect typesetting. And the switch-and-fold environments let you build trees of visibility for arbitrary parts of the document (the most obvious application being having exercises that can be switched to show the solutions). What is more: in TeXmacs one can be enforce a certain degree (to the extent permitted by the ambiguity in mathematical notation) of semantics for math, so that good-looking expressions can be directly sent to a computer algebra system (CAS) for evaluation (and printed back in a way you can read). So TeXmacs can interface to CASs and in general any programming language. In fact, thinking about code editing, am not sure why TeXmacs could not, in principle, be the Scheme-based Emacs that some people have dreamt of (cf. the defunct Guilemacs effort, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304457). Maybe it will: a dedicated community of hackers led by Darcy is doing experiments in this direction in a friendly fork under the name “Mogan” - https://mogan.app/guide/what-is-mogan.html https://mogan.app/guide/what-is-mogan.html, although I have no idea what are the plans for Mogan Code. TeXmacs does not use Electron, so while it does import HTML reasonably, it won't render websites in their full glory. But there was a recent job offer for somebody to work on improving the rudimentary capabilities for collaborative editing, so it might end up offering an alternative to Overleaf.

Y_Y 2y ago
Honestly I haven't used TeXmacs in a while. I was an avid user of LyX for a long time, until Overleaf enshittified its way into everything and became mandatory for at least the collaborations I was involved in. TeXmacs always appealed to me, but I couldn't manage to get it to tangle out source code the way I wanted and ended up falling back on lesser tools like Jupyter for typesetting-CAS-code interaction. I really should revisit it, it's definitely an underappreciated gem. I'm also delighted to note that Guile Emacs is scheduled to rise from its grave next week and I'm quite optimistic about its success this time round. Robin Templeton is apparently back working on it and they'll give a talk at Emacsconf: https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/guile/ https://emacsconf.org/2024/talks/guile/

sourcepluck 2y ago

https://project-mage.org/ https://project-mage.org/ deserves a mention, but it's at the prototypical idea stage for now as far as I know, although the guy seems serious and sincere.

Y_Y 2y ago
I was keen to see the outcome of that, but looking at the most recent updates it looks like the developer has been pulled away by burnout or some other external cause and progress has dried up.
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  Had a look for updates there - it seems to be in stasis yes. Fingers crossed that it's only temporary, and that the developer is doing alright. He was a very exciting writer anyway, I found.