Could Emacs be rewritten in Python?

[Ian Bicking]

On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 15:28, Patrick K. O'Brien wrote:
> Actually, we don't have to clone everything about the interface.  I'm
> using wxPython, so the interface is pretty and more easily configured.
> But some people actually like the minibuffer, so we'll need to support
> something like it and something less ugly.  Heck, I'm actually running
> three different versions of the interface now, and I only wrote the
> code this week (minus the almost two year's worth of code in PyCrust).

No, don't change the interface!  It's one of the best parts about
Emacs... it doesn't use all the stupid crap that most GUIs put in.  The
minibuffer is vastly superior to popup dialogs.  The keyboard focus is
simple and actually works, unlike most GUIs.  M-x actually works, where
menus for that many commands wouldn't work well at all.

I came to appreciate Emacs more when I looked at THE
http://humane.sf.net/the/ -- an editor made by Jef Raskin, former Mac
interface designer.  The interface he describes, without realizing it,
is Emacs, and THE is just a poor implementation of Emacs.  I point out
the similarities in:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=796533&forum_id=193382

Now, I'm not saying Emacs couldn't be improved.  But it's a far, far
better starting point that "modern" text editors.  I'm thoroughly
convinced that modality is the superior interface for most situations,
and I think GUIs are leaning more in that direction as time goes on.  I
think this is why vi remains popular -- even though I personally don't
like it -- because it's modal.  At least anything that's keyboard
friendly should be modal, and a text editor that isn't keyboard friendly
is clearly stupid.

But I'd still like a Python Emacs to make experimentation with UI
possible.  It would also be neat if it could be an environment for
application development, like Emacs is, like THE wants to be... Oberon
was like this too, and while I didn't like many parts of Oberon, the
overall environment was really neat.  Squeak keeps trying to move this
way too.  I'd love to see an environment where there was less boundary
between module, one-off program, and end-user application.  But ignore
such high ideas, because they will distract and overwhelm :)  The editor
is a great starting point for any number of things, but if you get to
thinking about all those things it'll keep you from starting the
foundation ;)

  Ian