Re: New year - Out with the old!

[Barry Fishman]

On 2020-12-23 08:38:22 GMT, novim wrote:
>> Everyone new to Emacs finds how different it is. That can be like
>> discovering a new continent. For some, it's marvelous. For others,
>> it's just primitive, populated by savages, a decaying culture, or is
>> just no longer relevant. For some, it's a mix.
>
> The question is: what is the goal?
>
> Is it getting Emacs used by more people, so the ideals of free
> software reaches more people? Or is it keeping it as is, a niche tool
> which free software enthusiast can discover if they want to?

If you ask a loaded question, you get a useless answer.

This seems to be the usual commercial goal of giving people fewer
choices, and have every product go after the same (biggest) market,
Maybe each with a slight twist that makes it seem better but
fundamentally is the same as all the others.

Is the goal to get more people to use Emacs and then somehow (?) have
that lead to them using more Free Software, or is it getting people to
prefer and use Free Software because it is better being designed for and
by its users, and not distorted by corporate attempts at controlling,
and extracting as much money as possible from its users?

There are plenty of editors out there, free and non-free; but in many
ways Emacs doesn't have alternatives.  Getting Emacs to work like other
editors is not providing something that does not already exist, but in a
real way taking something away from people who don't have other good
choices.  I know I have spent a long time with a section of my Emacs
init file labeled, "Forward into the Past", undoing new changes to
the Emacs API that made things harder for me.  But as a *user* developed
application, usually, these changes were eventually rolled back or
modified to be less of a problem.

If one really wants to provide freedom for computer users, one should
not try to build the ultimate application that the plurality of people
like, but build a set of applications that meet the needs of each user
community.  Maybe sharing code (where free software has a clear
advantage over the proprietary alternatives).

<Off topic>

Personally, I would think it would be useful to fork Emacs (probably
starting with Gemacs) and produce an editor that integrates well with
Guile-3, Gtk-4, and the Gnome desktop.  It would focus on the common set
of goals: produce applications that anyone can use, and share a common
user interface, GTK, (and hopefully programming interface, Guile), at the
expense (initially) of a good chunk of Emacs functionality.

It could then act as a framework to port useful Emacs functionality to a
new Guile based editor in a way that worked well in a Graphical
environment and even show up in other applications.  We could learn more
about whether this made sense.

We would have more reason to invest in things like a Jit compiler that
was automatically available to a wide set of applications.  The Guile
framework is already looking at supporting JavaScript which is used by
much of Gnome.

The main Emacs project could then focus on programmers who want to
preserve the (programmable) easily modified editor/framework it has
always been, which will run in a wide variety of situations.  And then
its loyal users would not be antagonized to make it into a less familiar
(ever more complex) editor chasing the Microsoft's or Apple's attempts
at keeping their software (proprietorially) distinct, but familiar to
the plurality of users.

--
Barry Fishman