The Modernization of Emacs

[Thomas F. Burdick]

For the love of dogs, Xah, try to keep up.  Aquamacs is an Emacs
distribution that, which not there yet, is at least half way between
"classic" Emacs and a modern Mac UI.  You sound ridiculous, like if
you were complaining about Windows not being really graphical, based
on experience with Windows-386 in the era when 95 was already around.

On Jun 17, 5:13 pm, Xah Lee <x... at xahlee.org> wrote:
> [this post is a excerpt from
> The Modernization of Emacs, Xah Lee, 2006-04 athttp://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization.html
> ]
>
> The Modernization of Emacs
>
> ----------------------------------------
> THE PROBLEM
>
> Emacs is a great editor. It is perhaps the most powerful and most
> versatile text editor. And, besides text editing, it also serves as a
> email application, newsgroup application, ftp application, irc
> application, web browser, shell interface, file management
> application, programable calculator, calendar and personal info
> management application, lisp language system, among other things.
> These seemingly wild functionalities are employed in production daily
> by a significant number of programers around the world. Some calls
> emacs as a Operating System as a joke. (Technically it does not
> qualify because a OS implies management of hardware.).
>
> If emacs is such a great and powerful text editor why almost nobody
> knows about it? Vast majority of people who need to write will be more
> than happy to use editors other than emacs. Ask a Microsoft Windows
> user. She'll be more than happy to use Microsoft Word↗. If he doesn't
> have MS Word, he'll use NotePad↗ or WordPad↗. If he is a programer,
> most will be more than happy to use any of other graphical editors on
> the Windows platform or any of the Integrated development
> environment↗. Same is true on other operating systems, and new editors
> spring up here and there even though they don't have as much power or
> flexibility as emacs. For example, there are NEdit, JEdit, Eclipse,
> Xcode↗ , or the various associated with languages or third party
> language software, such as Visual Basic or Borland C++.
>
> Many reasons can be made out of this. For example, emacs is not
> bundled on popular operating systems such as Windows or Mac, which are
> used by some 99% of computer users worldwide. Windows and Mac both
> have simple text editors bundled that will satisfy majority of
> computer users, which are non-professional computer users. (NotePad
> and WordPad on Windows, TextEdit↗ on Mac) For the few professional
> computer users, a majority will need a easy to use, yet powerful
> editor that also does styled text, formatting, and sundry light
> publishing needs such as table layout, simple line graphics drawing,
> embedded images, math formulas. They will choose and adopt Microsoft
> Word for their needs. The tiny percentage that might be interested in
> emacs, are programers. Even among professional programers, a majority
> shy away from emacs.
>
> A major difficulty among programers who do not use or like emacs, is
> that emacs's user interface is rather esoteric, involving arcane
> terminologies and keystrokes. This is in sharp contrast to the
> thousands of software applications used today, where their User
> Interface are similar and familiar to today's computer users.
>
> ----------------------------------------
> THE COMMON USER INTERFACE
>
> The following is a excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Common User
> Access↗:
>
> CUA was a detailed specification and set strict rules about how
> applications should look and function. Its aim was in part to bring
> about harmony between MS-DOS applications, which until then had
> implemented totally different user interfaces.
>
> Examples:
>
>     * In WordPerfect, the command to open a file was [F7], [3].
>
>     * In Lotus 1-2-3, a file was opened with [/] (to open the menus),
> [W] (for Workspace), [R] (for Retrieve).
>
>     * In Microsoft Word, a file was opened with [Esc] (to open the
> menus), [T] (for Transfer), [L] (for Load).
>
>     * In WordStar, it was [Ctrl]+[K]+[O].
>
>     * In Emacs, a file was opened with [Ctrl]+[x] followed by [Ctrl]+
> [f] (for find-file).
>
> Some programs used [Esc] to cancel an action, some used it to complete
> one; WordPerfect used it to repeat a character. Some programs used
> [End] to go to the end of a line, some used it to complete filling in
> a form. [F1] was often help but in WordPerfect that was [F3]. [Ins]
> sometimes toggled between overtype and inserting characters, but some
> programs used it for “paste”.
>
> Thus, every program had to be learned individually and its complete
> user interface memorized. It was a sign of expertise to have learned
> the UIs of dozens of applications, since a novice user facing a new
> program would find their existing knowledge of a similar application
> absolutely no use whatsoever.
>
> ----------------------------------------
> SIMPLE CHANGES
>
> In the following, i describe some critical changes that are also very
> easy to fix in emacs. If emacs officially adopt these changes, i think
> it will make a lot people, at least programers, like emacs and choose
> emacs as their text editor.
>
>     * Change the keyboard shortcut of Copy & Paste to ctrl-c and ctrl-
> v as to be the same with all modern applications.
>
>     * Change the undo behavior so that there is a Undo and Redo, as
> the same with all modern applications.
>
>     * Get rid of the *scratch* buffer.
>
>     * Change the terminology of “kill” to “cut”, and “yank” to
> “paste”.
>
>     * Change the terminology of Meta key to Alt.
>
>     * Make longlines-mode the default editor behavior for any file.
>
> Things emacs should do now, even though it eventually will do.
>
>     * When opening a HTML document, automatically provide highlighting
> of HTML, CSS, and Javascript codes. Similarly for other multi-language
> files such as PHP, JSP, et al. This behavior must be automatic without
> requiring user to customize emacs.
>
> Possible Documentation Change Proposals
>
>     * Reduce the use of the word “buffer” in the emacs documentation.
> Call it “opened file” or “unsaved document”.
>
>     * Switch the terminology of Window and Frame so it is more
> standard. That is, Emacs's “Window” should be called Panes or Frames.
> While Emacs's “Frame” should be termed Window.
>
>     * Change the terminology of keybinding to “keyboard shortcut” in
> emacs documentation. Use the term keybinding or binding only in a
> technical context, such as in elisp documentation.
>
>   Xah
>   x... at xahlee.org
> ∑http://xahlee.org/