From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs design and architecture (was: Shrinking the C core) Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2023 16:00:38 +0300 Message-ID: <83cyynpmvd.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87ledwx7sh.fsf@yahoo.com> <877cpfybhf.fsf@yahoo.com> <873503y66i.fsf@yahoo.com> <87fs3ur9u8.fsf@dataswamp.org> <875y4moiiq.fsf@dataswamp.org> <83r0n4rj78.fsf@gnu.org> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="4368"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Lynn Winebarger Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue Sep 12 15:56:35 2023 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 1qg3sX-0000sF-VP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:56:34 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qg30q-0004Do-Ju; Tue, 12 Sep 2023 09:01:04 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qg30n-00047C-1Y for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 12 Sep 2023 09:01:02 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qg30m-0007NJ-Mn; Tue, 12 Sep 2023 09:01:00 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=References:Subject:In-Reply-To:To:From:Date: mime-version; bh=TEdC9CKQGd84DbcPiin1xytL1NmbAZjI1BuWF0E+iXY=; b=jwbU1UXo8eoD EuJT2aia2HMzb7lyFg2iUb3WOrthBsJWLjAIni4ddiSH9/ZcTp0e9UphO5QEabZKQPArj92nA0Tks dK/LuoW3O5AgudFsb460KEdmLdjiH2yUdiHO3LelG4OBkZ4upMs8HRKMg3sbafbvsAGYobXgUb7ez ZHoye0EJjw2dMnj3Lt9LofogcgAe47mQNzItw+3Y67rH9aOpVP0HZ8nnJyjbxbNQVRcrMScxo+tR5 vfvlnh1nPGubRZNpyKn2eVNXOy1RVu1RMZV/VZ9pBUzxO2lO2VDVbBQ3yfVOXp8y62aAiNJbge3lq GIGN/P9iWNiYuBTvAUiL6g==; In-Reply-To: (message from Lynn Winebarger on Tue, 12 Sep 2023 07:31:35 -0400) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 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-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:310519 Archived-At: > From: Lynn Winebarger > Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2023 07:31:35 -0400 > Cc: Richard Stallman , incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel > > If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a > text-processing system with a very different architecture and design, > which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and > implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point > is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies > are more modern from the get-go. > > It sounds like you have some specific ideas. I wouldn't mind hearing them at more length. They are all well known. And they aren't ideas, just main design features of Emacs which we found restrictive in some aspects: . "buffer with gap" for storing buffer text . "mark and sweep" GC . basic single-threaded MVC architecture . display engine design around the rectangular canvas model and on-the-fly layout decisions > My understanding is the design is deliberately kept simple (or "simple") to make it accessible to > more programmers. Richard will tell, but I don't think this goal was ever of high priority, back when Emacs was still being designed. > Instead of discussing porting emacs to CL, why don't people work on porting the compiler > techniques used in CL to emacs? Well, native-compilation is one step in that direction. We've been discussing something like that for many years, and we even tried a couple of approaches (which didn't work). Native compilation is the first successful experiment in that direction. Working on making the native code more efficient is definitely encouraged.