From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Ben McGinnes Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video Date: Sun, 24 May 2020 19:16:32 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <20200524191625.6plsh6xlk6scm7c7@adversary.org> References: <20200522190937.w5gq32lmzq4fmuv7@adversary.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="avppzh5p67zu4ioa" Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="25533"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: rpluim@gmail.com, colinetnathan98@gmail.com, andreas.roehler@online.de, arthur.miller@live.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Richard Stallman Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sun May 24 21:18:40 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jcw8u-0006c2-7Y for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sun, 24 May 2020 21:18:40 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45876 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jcw8t-0005DQ-AV for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sun, 24 May 2020 15:18:39 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:36602) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jcw8N-0004n0-Jv for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 24 May 2020 15:18:07 -0400 Original-Received: from xtrwkvxq.outbound-mail.sendgrid.net ([167.89.24.164]:20427) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jcw8M-0006Ef-Oi for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 24 May 2020 15:18:07 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=adversary.org; h=from:subject:references:mime-version:content-type:in-reply-to:to:cc; s=s1; bh=Sz6yF0jWirFQTTGyQPqvJoatuwVaPo5eWm8MLyz+D6I=; b=K+1+lBGcr4Fv7mY54RzAYep+QXMGcTEr+ryLKmjcGWgz55QjuahQOdoGXplKWlAH2Koh ga0PP1VXOjaQfInSOv8SVpx+gdoawypZp54BtUeJvLk3ic68pR3n9v6vrLAWlTvFGp7PtC hurgjemAoEEzyvhGg8RiMDNPJuOx6rHAg= Original-Received: by filterdrecv-p3iad2-8ddf98858-mzxhd with SMTP id filterdrecv-p3iad2-8ddf98858-mzxhd-20-5ECAC810-36 2020-05-24 19:16:32.786159466 +0000 UTC m=+5162946.703986864 Original-Received: from adversary.org (unknown) by ismtpd0002p1hnd1.sendgrid.net (SG) with ESMTP id 4pGM79g_TRSElriwTPG2Kg Sun, 24 May 2020 19:16:31.586 +0000 (UTC) OpenPGP: "id=DB4724E6FA4286C92B4E55C4321E4E2373590E5D; url=http://files.de.adversary.org/crypto/ben-key.asc; preference=signencrypt" Codes-of-Conduct-policy: "url=https://gitlab.com/Hasimir/project-participation-policy" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-SG-EID: =?us-ascii?Q?M7XSpjS22pFeWms=2F9N=2FJSaMWinPNp56cHj3hYxizKL6T5hc=2FZqhJNSQiYFgtsM?= =?us-ascii?Q?TaPNM+I90CCgbQTZRYCodJHRfCp0mpgmG3e0DaF?= =?us-ascii?Q?9imf+vQnvGZpzYNZIYpUOZynnNLXUqqHGAW9S8C?= =?us-ascii?Q?w=2FZN4syqeiIjJ19hypToN+Rh09zDAeZK=2FSj2KO+?= =?us-ascii?Q?bSPH=2FaD5d3SE07hsPZrlu6wvfr6ugW0=2FIxE3BIG?= =?us-ascii?Q?Ou6fEDPjbn6RG7Ta77RElpDGUqIR6elNJU6smb?= Received-SPF: pass client-ip=167.89.24.164; envelope-from=bounces+15940057-00a8-emacs-devel=gnu.org@em8820.adversary.org; helo=xtrwkvxq.outbound-mail.sendgrid.net X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: First seen = 2020/05/24 15:18:04 X-ACL-Warn: Detected OS = Linux 3.11 and newer X-Spam_score_int: -7 X-Spam_score: -0.8 X-Spam_bar: / X-Spam_report: (-0.8 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, RCVD_IN_BL_SPAMCOP_NET=1.347, RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H2=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001, UNPARSEABLE_RELAY=0.001, URIBL_BLOCKED=0.001 autolearn=_AUTOLEARN X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:251333 Archived-At: --avppzh5p67zu4ioa Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 12:11:27AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: >=20 >> Would you intend that to produce existing open standard formats >> (i.e. mainly OpenDocument Format files, but someone will inevitably >> include DOCX and PPTX out of necessity)? >=20 > Sure, ideally. Well, ODF does have a flat file format which can make it a little easier to work with, though it's been a few years since I last did anything like that. Actually, maybe more than a few. IIRC, though, DOCX is far less painful under the hood (which is annoying, but not much we can do about that now). >> Perhaps. It depends on how much your vision actually requires >> native support and how much can be done by utilising existing >> technology which GNU Emacs already understands to produce that end >> result. >=20 > It is fine to make use of external free programs to do the job, > provided that gives good practical results. Then that opens up a lot of options, especially for intermediate solutions to produce the desired output prior to achieving WYSIWYG functionality in Emacs. You should certainly be able to achieve WYSIWYM right now. Org-mode effectively already does. Mainly, though, I was thinking of taking advantage of the fact that the existing document formats already used are XML formats then you could just utlise that and XSLT to go from some simpler format and interface to produce whatever you want. There's already plenty of existing support within the GNU project, so why not use it? > Perhaps I didn't make this clear, but the goal I have in mind > includes WYSIWYG display of formatted text. Yeah, I thought so, hence the "ambitious" comment. >> OTOH, there are reasons I almost never use Emacs to write fiction=20 >=20 > Would you like to explain why? We might learn something from seeing > your reasons. Fair enough. For me it's a combination of function and state of mind; Emacs can only really affect the former, of course. I suspect much of the functionality issues could probably be gotten around with some custom major and/or minor modes. There are certain things which are generally just done with styles or templates that most purely text based editors would address by inserting additional content (e.g. extra blank lines, special characters, etc.). Ligatures would be very nice, but are less of a concern when the publishing software[1] will take care of that properly later. Smart quotation marks for either single or double quotes are pretty much essential for anything dialogue related (so =E2=80=98 or =E2=80=99 ins= tead of ', except when the latter is just an apostrophe - though that does get a little more finicky sometimes, and =E2=80=9C or =E2=80=9D instead of "). A= s well as "smart typing" like always capitalising the lone "i" or fixing capitalisation on a new sentence is frequently exploited when writing a lot. There's almost certainly several other things which aren't coming to mind because normally I don't need to think about them. To put into perspective how much a difference these little things can make: I think my record in one writing session was a chapter of about 20,800 words in around 21 hours. Doing that without all those little features would either take far longer (and risk interrupting the writing flow), or significantly increase the amount of manual editing required later. The state of mind thing is more a matter of encouraging the creative flow and sometimes that means manipulating the way I see the text as I write it (the nature of which generally varies according to the subject matter). Usually, though it just comes down to never having to really think about doing something with the software other than just write. At the moment LibreOffice does all that and more, which makes it ideal for fiction and longer political work. With the added bonus of not generally making my mind follow more technical paths when I look at it. Which is something Emacs does with me to a large extent, since it's so integral to many of my more geeky pursuits. I've certainly quite happily used it to write technical documentation[2] and code, and no doubt will continue to do so. It's even helped with part of my little Unicode cheat sheet,[3] even though that's still mostly done in LibreOffice.[4] Regards, Ben 1. My publishing platform is rather more technical than the scope of this thread, so I'm leaving that part out. 2. Like this (using Org-mode and its XHTML export): http://files.au.adversary.org/crypto/gpgme-python-howto.html 3. http://files.east1.us.adversary.org/files/UnicodeNotes.pdf 4. Because Emacs still beats everything else for inserting code points from plane 1 or above. The relevant part of my ~/.emacs file for displaying most of the current Unicode spec is at the end of the PDF linked above. --avppzh5p67zu4ioa Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iHUEABEKAB0WIQSkiyjzmoPmPFW48w5Icjp1eQQexgUCXsrIAAAKCRBIcjp1eQQe xuAKAP0SnQW0qmTCC28kldkeMBv0GGCr7yG0KixsCB+JUitdRAEAlOIlKjsrybrI /V44XwLgsQbP9Y109QUm68kG4qteTdI= =I/ZU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --avppzh5p67zu4ioa--