Could Emacs be rewritten in Python?

Mon Apr 7 00:02:00 EDT 2003

Ian Bicking wrote:
> No, don't change the interface! ...  The
> minibuffer is vastly superior to popup dialogs.

One thing I would suggest is to give each window its own
minibuffer (appearing when needed). I find it very annoying
when I start doing something with the minibuffer, temporarily
want to go and do something in another window which requires
using the minibuffer, and get "Minibuffer already in use,
use control-meta-cokebottle to abort"... Aaaarghhh!

> I think this is why vi remains popular -- even though I personally don't
> like it -- because it's modal.

Er, I'm afraid I can't agree that modality is a good thing
in general. It has its uses, but only in limited contexts, I
find. As in the above -- having each window modal with respect
to its own minibuffer is okay; having the *entire* application
modal with respect to *one* minibuffer is a nuisance.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg