a look at the browser scene & emacs

[Xah Lee]

News about the browser world
http://www.macworld.com/article/139022/2009/02/safari4firstlook.html?t=232

emacs really needs to keep up.

The IDE idea, from 1990s to 2000, basically reduced emacs market share
from perhaps more than 50% in the early 1990s to maybe 1% today among
professional programers.

emacs today has lots of problems. Many of the “emacs way”, are
technically inferior. But the nice elisp system holds it back still.

The way for emacs to advance, is to get more people to use emacs.
Emacs users today are already just the very small clique, half of
which are perhaps over 40. With these small circle of people, every
idea that's not “emacs way” gets stamped out.

Emacs 22 took a few major step, by having syntax highlighting on by
default, and CUA mode as a option. Emacs 23 took it further, by having
cursor move by visual line, and have highlight selection on by
default. I presume that in emacs 24 might have CUA mode on by
default... but these changes are happening quite late.

The emacs on the mac, in particular Aquamac emacs and Carbon emacs,
did significant job in saving emacs from oblivion. There are a lot
needs to be done, especially on the Windows platform because it is
used by most people.

• The Modernization of Emacs
  http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization.html

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

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