Eli Zaretskii writes: >> Closing thought: one of the largest advantages of learning to use Emacs >> instead of any other tool is that Emacs can follow you wherever you go. >> Whatever the platform you may (be forced to?) use in the future, Emacs >> will be there and your skills will be an advantage. The android port >> closes a significant gap for this. I’ve seen several people move their >> workflows to proprietary web applications because “then I can use it on >> the tablet”. Emacs on Android can provide a viable alternative to that. > > Thanks, but what you say gives the POV of an Android user, not the POV > of the Emacs maintenance. I have no doubt whatsoever that having > Emacs on Android will benefit Android users; my doubts are whether we > as the project should and can take upon ourselves this additional > maintenance burden, and promise the Android users that we will > maintain, let alone develop, this port for the years to come. That’s not the view of an Android user (I do not currently use Android, except as an offline two-factor device), but the view of a long term Emacs user: It is a big advantage for me that Emacs will be wherever my future life with computers takes me. Having Emacs everywhere also allows me to avoid lock-in by whatever platform I use. I may not always have the choice of the platform (depending on what I do for a living), but by using Emacs I will be able to preserve my choice to jump back to a libre platform without losing my skills. I do not see this as promising that the port will be developed in the future — that always depends on a developer being interested in doing that work — but from what Po Lu wrote it does not seem like a large burden. And from my experience with Java (10 years for volunteer projects and 5 years professional) 6000 lines of Java are not much. It’s a pretty verbose language. The main risk I see is in the toolchain. @Po Lu: How hard is it to set up a development environment that can create an apk from the Emacs sources — assuming no prior android development experience? If it does take a while: are there ways to reduce that? Best wishes, Arne -- Unpolitisch sein heißt politisch sein, ohne es zu merken. draketo.de