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I'm very glad people are doing this. The local maximum created by TeX (and its surroundings), while producing impressive output, has kept many people from devel

by jwr 12y ago

I'm very glad people are doing this. The local maximum created by TeX (and its surroundings), while producing impressive output, has kept many people from developing any typesetting software. It was usually easier to learn how to trick TeX into doing what you wanted, or build yet another overlay on top of it. A similar local maximum exists with Emacs (you might also call it a local energy minimum, as it requires less energy to hack Emacs into doing what you want than to write a whole new system). This has also held back editor development for years (if not decades), but recently we started seeing attempts at breaking out (LightTable is one example). This is an interesting phenomenon: neither TeX nor Emacs are bad, in fact they are both impressive pieces of software. But we could do better now, and yet we usually don't even start, because it is such a daunting task, and it is easier to extend existing solutions. Best of luck to authors and contributors to this project!

mtdewcmu 12y ago
Your emacs analogy has issues -- vim is another programmable editor alongside emacs. And IDEs, especially ones like Eclipse, have similar complexity behind a graphical interface. Should languages be replaced, or is it better that they just grow and adapt? Look at the scale of the energy minimum around English.
- lloeki 12y ago
  Vim is merely another local maximum, complete with its own faults.
  - jwr 12y ago
    Yes. Leaving aside the discussion of whether it is programmable to the same extent as Emacs is, it is in the same category.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  The communities that back vim and emacs would never allow for evolution in the direction of light table or any of the other reinvent IDE projects; heck, they can't break out of their terminal/ASCII mindset for the most part. Technologically they could, but the community has bought into a certain set of principles that work well but don't allow for much deviation. So new projects come along and deviate from entrenched principles, sometimes in successful ways. English is quite different, it changes with time and even place.
  - sergiosgc 12y ago
    Terminal as a first level interface is not a vim mindset. It's a use case. The primary use case.

by jwr 12y ago

mtdewcmu 12y ago

Your emacs analogy has issues -- vim is another programmable editor alongside emacs. And IDEs, especially ones like Eclipse, have similar complexity behind a graphical interface. Should languages be replaced, or is it better that they just grow and adapt? Look at the scale of the energy minimum around English.

lloeki 12y ago
Vim is merely another local maximum, complete with its own faults.
- jwr 12y ago
  Yes. Leaving aside the discussion of whether it is programmable to the same extent as Emacs is, it is in the same category.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
The communities that back vim and emacs would never allow for evolution in the direction of light table or any of the other reinvent IDE projects; heck, they can't break out of their terminal/ASCII mindset for the most part. Technologically they could, but the community has bought into a certain set of principles that work well but don't allow for much deviation. So new projects come along and deviate from entrenched principles, sometimes in successful ways. English is quite different, it changes with time and even place.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  Terminal as a first level interface is not a vim mindset. It's a use case. The primary use case.