Re: Representation of the Emacs userbase on emacs-devel

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

> I don't like dragging other editors names into it very much, because I
> don't think that captures what this is or should be about.  It makes
> it sound like they have something very desirable that we don't, or
> that we simply try to imitate them.

I understand how you feel, but I think it is more on your side, in the eye of
beholder as they say. I don't mean it in a bad way. It is quite common practice
in other applications to acknowledge that peopel are comming to one's
application from other sites, and to give them possibility to easy
adaptation. If you remember the example with Blender and article from Linux mag
I posted some time ago here, it is a good example of this. Some commercial
applications will offer you to use interaction model of concurring applications.

> that we simply try to imitate them.  In reality, if they do better on
> this or that, it is only because they had the advantage of starting
> from a clean slate.

Same as above, it is not about them doing better. It is about Emacs being
flexible and make it easy for people to switch to Emacs with as least hassle as
possible.

>                      Emacs has no reason to make apologies for itself.
> We can support a UI more in line with current user expectations
> without reference to anyone but ourselves.

Again, it is not about apologies or anything like that. It is about being aware
that we are not a lone rock in the space. There are other rocks and people
sometimes do a jump. Lets give them a hand and help them do that step as easy as
possible. It is not an apology, it is strength.

Personally, I don't think that it is possible to immitate other applications
interaction models easily, because Emacs has expectations of more advanced
interaction model deeply ingrained in it's code. But if some modifications can
be done to help bring it into line of other, I don't see reason why not.