Hello, ...I'm talking about Emacs.
In <87bkdzssgm....@gmail.com> [1] Simon Tournier <zimon.touto...@gmail.com> writes: [1] https://yhetil.org/guix/87bkdzssgm....@gmail.com/ [...] > people are already engaging for improving the accessibility of editors > other than Emacs Simon gave me the opportunity to realize (once again) that IMO there is a foundamental misconception regarding Emacs. What is Emacs, exacly: is it an editor? I feel that a great deal of friction on the matter is due to the fact that Emacs is usually defined as an /editor/ (OK text editor, but it makes no difference)... **also** in its official page: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) IMO to define Emacs as a sort of «text editor on steroids with batteries included (Emacs Lisp)» does not represent the real nature of the program; an /effective/ definition would be: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- An extensible, customizable, free/libre user interface. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language, with extensions to use it as an interface to text editing functions and many, many more: MUA, web browser, task organizer... --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- To define Emacs as a /user interface/ it's not just a cool way to "market it", it means to classify its /unique/ (?) user interface design as one among all the historical instances of user interfaces: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- 1. batch interface 2. command line interface 3. SAA User Interface or Text-Based User Interface 4. graphical user interface 5. (editor note) web user interface --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface#History) Someone may consider Emacs "just" a "text-based user interface (UI)" (point 3. of the above mentioned list) like the ones using curses and alike (e.g. vim, mutt, ranger, Norton Commander and so on) but IMO Emacs implements a very different design, centered around a specific UI element called "emacs buffer". I consider Emacs as a 6th class of user interface :-D Just to bring my limited personal experience: I was a mutt+vim user for email management, ranger for file management... and so on, and since I was was **very** happy with my vim user experience when editing text, for a very long time I looked at Emacs as "just" another text editor I didn't need, because **as text editors** both vim, Emacs and alike are /very/ powerful and I was never ever interested for just a sec to the funny "editor war" (and similar "wars"). Then, one day, moved by curiosity and the fact that the Emacs interface is /integrated/ in the notmuch mail indexer I was already using, I started using Emacs as my preferred /user interface/ for notmuch... and some year later here I am, trying to use the Emacs interface for as much computing activities I can. Now I see Emacs in a very different way. Incidentally (?), AFAIU Emacs was the Guile IDE (integrated development environment, not text editor) used by Ludovic when he started programming Guix; he and probably some (many?) of the contributors was so happy with their tool that they started sharing their configuration snippets, as usual amoung a community of enthusiastic users... after many refinements and maybe some Emacs extentions progamming, they was so proud that they decided to recommend the same (set of) tool /and/ configuration to other _collegues_, the famous "perfect setup" described in the Guix manual. I'm also suspecting that the spark that started the "Guix Bang" in Ludovic's mind, the very moment he realized nix could be better _extended_ using Guile in place of it's DSL, was /caused/ by the fact he was a Lisp programmer, the specific /dialect/ probably did not matter. But I'm just guessing. Now I see Guix in a different way. :-) In this context: is the Guix project biased in recommending using Emacs (a Lisp interpreter and compiler for Emacs Lisp) to contributors? I don't think so. I'd rather say that - as in many other organizations and all similar projects - Guix adopts a "BYOT" (bring your own tool) organizational policy... and the first contributors brought theirs. :-D For sure vim/neovim - and other tools - can also be extended and *used* to provide /user interface/s for various external tools (e.g. see fugitive.vim/nvim-fugitive) that are useful when using and/or developing Guix, everyone is free to use and extend them, and also to share with the whole Guix community how their beloved BYOT are working well. Please see a recent message of mine (id:87pm2e4flj....@xelera.eu [2]) for some of my comments (nothing really new, I just reused concept already expressed by others) about the process needed to integrate useful informations (configuration _is_ information) in Guix official _recommandations_. Happy hacking! Gio' [2] https://yhetil.org/guix/87pm2e4flj....@xelera.eu/ -- Giovanni Biscuolo Xelera IT Infrastructures
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