Re: Time to throw away my LOVE - Emacs ?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Barak Zalstein <no_spam@please.not> wrote on Tue, 8 Jun 2004 16:20:14 +0300:
> "Alan Mackenzie" <acm@muc.de> wrote in message v064ac.ok.ln@acm.acm">news:v064ac.ok.ln@acm.acm...

>> Oh no they won't!  They most certainly won't be appearing on my beloved
>> Linux tty, where I run Emacs.  (I only ever start Emacs in X for testing
>> purposes).

> A fully maximized Cygwin window containing Emacs will look as pleasant as a
> Linux tty (and skips GUI portability design decisions altoghether).

1: A matter of taste;  2: I'd be cynical about that.  :-)

> Unfortunately, enough reasons to run away from this mode: Backspace
> mismatched with Control-H (or other wrong keymaps),

You mean the Cygwin mode?  That kind of contradicts the above.

> Emacs interpretation of xls, doc, pdf, and html is nonexistent or
> insufficient.

Emacs isn't the right tool for these (close/proprietory) formats, no.
Don't know about HTML, though.

> And of course the occasional application that runs only in GUI.

Yep.  That's what X Windows (or whatever) is for.

> As much as I would want to see Emacs as "one stop shop" for all computing
> needs, ....

Not me.  I use other appropriate tools for other tasks - such as vim,
invoked by tin, for writing this article.

> .... interacting with non-Emacs users means to use a common ground,
> which sometimes means that Emacs compliance is too much of a
> distraction to follow.

The common ground is the format of the data.  If we're talking about,
say, text files (program source, etc.), there are no such barriers.  I'm
not sure what you mean by "Emacs compliance" here.  Emacs imposes
virtually no constraints on data formats.  (I can think of precisely one
at the moment, namely the brace/bracket which opens a function body must
be in column zero.  But even this is less true than it was.) 

> You cannot really say "Emacs is the right tool" when investment in
> enhanced productivity is contradicted by other programming paradigms
> (anything visual).

Not sure what you mean here, either.  For its original function, namely
as a programmers' editor, Emacs is unsurpassed in productivity.  It's
pretty slick at other things, too.

Are you suggesting that other programming paradigms (anything "visual")
are a barrier to enhanced productivity?  If so, I agree with you.

> Barak

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
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