Making Emacs popular again with a video

Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Nathan Colinet]

Hello,

I read on the mailing list that you're looking for a way to make Emacs 
popular again. I thought I could share my idea.

I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was 
really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install 
packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but 
then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then 
I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and it was way 
too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to have a 5-10 
minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old obscure porgram but 
as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically improves efficiency. I 
think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why 
promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default Emacs.

I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.

Stay safe and well,

Nathan Colinet

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Arthur Miller]

Nathan Colinet <colinetnathan98@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I read on the mailing list that you're looking for a way to make Emacs popular
> again. I thought I could share my idea.
>
> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was really
> confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install packages, what are
> major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but then I saw a 1 hour talk
> about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then I was hooked. Unfortunately the
> sound was no good at all and it was way too long. I think it could be really
> benefic for emacs to have a 5-10 minutes video that would present Emacs not as
> an old obscure porgram but as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically
> improves efficiency. I think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience,
> that's why promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default
> Emacs.
>
> I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.
>
> Stay safe and well,
>
> Nathan Colinet
There are already such videos. Check out emacs rocks on YT.
https://www.youtube.com/user/emacsrocks

Those are even linked to on Emacs webpage, ir you open emacs.org and
scroll down, you will find the links.

But surely Emacs could have used more of such short feature showing-off
videos/tutorials. 

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Kangas]

Nathan Colinet <colinetnathan98@gmail.com> writes:

> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was
> really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install
> packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but

Welcome to Emacs!  You made the right choice.

> then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then
> I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and it was way
> too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to have a 5-10
> minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old obscure porgram but
> as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically improves efficiency.

This is a very good idea.  The only problem is that someone has to do
it.  :-)

Would you be prepared to volunteer for working on that?

> I think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why
> promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default
> Emacs.

This is valuable input, I think.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[ndame]

> > I think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why
> > promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default
> > Emacs.

> This is valuable input, I think.

Someone else too made a similar proposal in a reddit comment:


begin quote:

IMO the very first thing a use should be greeted with is a dialog box that says something along the lines of

"Hey, welcome to Emacs! Emacs is a very old editor with a ton of legacy we'd like to preserve.
If you want a more modern experience, you can try these community-made configs instead:

* Spacemacs [Install]: The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim, it's Emacs and Vim!
* Centaur Emacs [Install]: A Fancy and Fast Emacs Configuration
* Doom Emacs [Install]: An Emacs configuration for the stubborn martian vimmer
* CUA mode [Enable]: Use keybinds commonly found in other modern editors

[No thanks, II'd like to cook my own config]"

It'd be a very simple change but an immense improvement to the new user experience.


end quote



Would it be acceptable to recommend popular startup packages on the splash screen if the user has an active network connection?  I guess in that case it's not a problem if it's not bundled with emacs, since emacs can install it from the net by adding melpa to the package list automatically.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Kangas]

ndame <ndame@protonmail.com> writes:

>> > I think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why
>> > promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default
>> > Emacs.
>
>> This is valuable input, I think.
>
> Someone else too made a similar proposal in a reddit comment:

Thanks.  To be clear, I was referring to the part about the
out-of-the-box experience.

> Would it be acceptable to recommend popular startup packages on the
> splash screen if the user has an active network connection?  I guess
> in that case it's not a problem if it's not bundled with emacs, since
> emacs can install it from the net by adding melpa to the package list
> automatically.

IMHO, we should not promote third-party "init files" as a primary
option, but rather improve Emacs itself.

(But maybe we could consider promoting them in the FAQ?)

We have discussed to have "custom themes" (I proposed to rebrand them as
"profiles") which the user could potentially be prompted about on
initial startup.  I believe this would be worthwhile to explore further.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Nathan Colinet <colinetnathan98@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 8 May 2020 10:26:19 +0200
> 
> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was 
> really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install 
> packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but 
> then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then 
> I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and it was way 
> too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to have a 5-10 
> minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old obscure porgram but 
> as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically improves efficiency. I 
> think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why 
> promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default Emacs.
> 
> I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.

I think it's a very good idea.  Would someone want to produce such a
video?

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 08.05.20 um 10:26 schrieb Nathan Colinet:
> Hello,
> 
> I read on the mailing list that you're looking for a way to make Emacs 
> popular again. I thought I could share my idea.
> 
> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was 
> really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install 
> packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but 
> then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then 
> I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and it was way 
> too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to have a 5-10 
> minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old obscure porgram but 
> as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically improves efficiency. I 
> think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why 
> promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default Emacs.
> 
> I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.
> 
> Stay safe and well,
> 
> Nathan Colinet
> 
> 
> 

Hi,

thanks bringing that up. Agree such a video might be helpful. The 
reasons however, why Emacs is a kind of niche nowadays are multiple and 
complex. Leaving apart all items Emacs itself can't change, there is 
something which can be done IMO: making Emacs ready for a beginner in 
programming resp. for non-programmers. Make Emacs appear mannerly as 
just an editor first. Which also means: at the beginning leave apart all 
complex stuff useful for advanced programmers only.

For instance at "Introduction" fairly everything in first paragraphs 
IMHO may be dropped resp. should be moved at later sections. Copy stuff 
below for the convenience of the reader here.

All the day enjoying Emacs,
Andreas

Copy:

Introduction
************

You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.  (The ‘G’ in
GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) is not silent.)

    We call Emacs “advanced” because it can do much more than simple
insertion and deletion of text.  It can control subprocesses, indent
programs automatically, show multiple files at once, edit remote files
like they were local files, and more.  Emacs editing commands operate in
terms of characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages, as
well as expressions and comments in various programming languages.

    “Self-documenting” means that at any time you can use special
commands, known as “help commands”, to find out what your options are,
or to find out what any command does, or to find all the commands that
pertain to a given topic.  *Note Help::.

    “Customizable” means that you can easily alter the behavior of Emacs
commands in simple ways.  For instance, if you use a programming
language in which comments start with ‘<**’ and end with ‘**>’, you can
tell the Emacs comment manipulation commands to use those strings (*note
Comments::).  To take another example, you can rebind the basic cursor
motion commands (up, down, left and right) to any keys on the keyboard
that you find comfortable.  *Note Customization::.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Alan Third]

On Fri, May 08, 2020 at 07:32:02AM -0400, Stefan Kangas wrote:
> 
> IMHO, we should not promote third-party "init files" as a primary
> option, but rather improve Emacs itself.

Maybe we should embrace them, and provide tools to build custom Emacs
distributions. Put absolutely everything that isn’t absolutely
required for Emacs into ELPA so there’s a core Emacs that is as basic
as it gets, then, I don’t know, use manifest files to build a
distribution that pulls in the stuff we need from ELPA or wherever
else.

We could provide our own ‘UNIX Neckbeards’ distribution, which is
simply Emacs as we know it now. ;)

Other, motivated, people could then do the heavy lifting of developing
and supporting so called modern distributions.

We sort of have this already with Aquamacs.
-- 
Alan Third

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Kangas]

Alan Third <alan@idiocy.org> writes:

>> IMHO, we should not promote third-party "init files" as a primary
>> option, but rather improve Emacs itself.
>
> Maybe we should embrace them, and provide tools to build custom Emacs
> distributions.

Perhaps I was being unclear.  What I don't like is the suggestion that
we should just tell people to go to website X to download and install
a bunch of init files.

I think we could provide some _variant_ of what these distributions are
doing, namely sets of ready-made customization.  The question is how to
go about it.

I've been thinking a lot about this problem, but I have not had time to
do any serious work.  So please consider these ideas as tentative:

I would propose to add a concept of "custom profiles" (or simply
"profiles"), which are basically defthemes.  Please see the separate
(brief) discussion about this here, and also the related thread:

    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-04/msg02032.html

One can imagine these "profiles" to be big distributions like spacemacs,
or (perhaps better) small snippets or sets of customization.  Some of
these could/should be included in Emacs by default.

One can also imagine there being one profile providing "good defaults
for a new user".[1]  Maybe such a profile could be the default at some
point in the future, but this is IMHO better discussed and decided once
it actually exists.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

Footnotes:
[1] Eli has pointed out that the biggest hurdle is to decide what such a
     "profile" (in my terminology) should include.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Monnier]

> Maybe we should embrace them, and provide tools to build custom Emacs
> distributions. Put absolutely everything that isn’t absolutely
> required for Emacs into ELPA so there’s a core Emacs that is as basic
> as it gets, then, I don’t know, use manifest files to build
> a distribution that pulls in the stuff we need from ELPA or
> wherever else.

I think we should, indeed.  Sadly, I haven't found the time/energy to
dig into Doom, Spacemacs, etc... to see how we could do that in a way
that's better than what's already done.

For me "better" would mostly mean that the efforts expanded on one
distribution would "directly" carry over to another.

In an ideal world, these distributions would be basically a list of
packages that are required along with a kind of custom-theme.

And ideally, you should then be able to say you want "Spacemacs + foo -
bar" and you can later update to the latest Spacemacs and it will still
work (still removing "bar" from it and adding "foo" to it).


        Stefan

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Nathan Colinet]

Thank you for your reply.

I would happily help on that video (for the content) but I'm definitely 
not qualified to shoot/realise it, I don't even have a decent micro. I 
think if we want this video to have the desired effect the FSF or GNU 
(don't know who's in charge) might need to pay someone to realise it.

Regards,

Nathan

On 2020-05-08 12:41, Stefan Kangas wrote:
> Nathan Colinet <colinetnathan98@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was
>> really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install
>> packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but
> Welcome to Emacs!  You made the right choice.
>
>> then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then
>> I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and it was way
>> too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to have a 5-10
>> minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old obscure porgram but
>> as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically improves efficiency.
> This is a very good idea.  The only problem is that someone has to do
> it.  :-)
>
> Would you be prepared to volunteer for working on that?
>
>> I think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why
>> promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default
>> Emacs.
> This is valuable input, I think.
>
> Best regards,
> Stefan Kangas

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Nathan Colinet]

We could find someone on reddit, I think a lot of YouTubers are 
following r/linux. To ensure the video quality GNU or FSF might need to 
pay someone to produce it. I have some ideas about the features of emacs 
the video could highlight.

Regards,

Nathan

On 2020-05-08 13:33, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Nathan Colinet <colinetnathan98@gmail.com>
>> Date: Fri, 8 May 2020 10:26:19 +0200
>>
>> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was
>> really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install
>> packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but
>> then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then
>> I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and it was way
>> too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to have a 5-10
>> minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old obscure porgram but
>> as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically improves efficiency. I
>> think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience, that's why
>> promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default Emacs.
>>
>> I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.
> I think it's a very good idea.  Would someone want to produce such a
> video?

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Nathan Colinet]

> There are already such videos. Check out emacs rocks on YT.
> https://www.youtube.com/user/emacsrocks
>
> Those are even linked to on Emacs webpage, ir you open emacs.org and
> scroll down, you will find the links.
I don't think any brand new user will bother watching something like 
"episode 15 restclient-mode". I think they need "How Emacs makes you 
efficient" or "Emacs makes everything easier" on emacs.org.

> But surely Emacs could have used more of such short feature showing-off
> videos/tutorials.
Maybe Emacs doesn't need more of them but only a good one IMHO.

Regards,

Nathan

On 2020-05-08 12:39, Arthur Miller wrote:
> Nathan Colinet <colinetnathan98@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I read on the mailing list that you're looking for a way to make Emacs popular
>> again. I thought I could share my idea.
>>
>> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was really
>> confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install packages, what are
>> major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up but then I saw a 1 hour talk
>> about Emacs that shows how powerful it is. Then I was hooked. Unfortunately the
>> sound was no good at all and it was way too long. I think it could be really
>> benefic for emacs to have a 5-10 minutes video that would present Emacs not as
>> an old obscure porgram but as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically
>> improves efficiency. I think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box experience,
>> that's why promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be better than the default
>> Emacs.
>>
>> I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.
>>
>> Stay safe and well,
>>
>> Nathan Colinet
> There are already such videos. Check out emacs rocks on YT.
> https://www.youtube.com/user/emacsrocks
>
> Those are even linked to on Emacs webpage, ir you open emacs.org and
> scroll down, you will find the links.
>
> But surely Emacs could have used more of such short feature showing-off
> videos/tutorials.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Nathan Colinet]

Hi,

I agree that's too advanced for a beginner user.

On 2020-05-09 09:50, Andreas Röhler wrote:
>
>
> Am 08.05.20 um 10:26 schrieb Nathan Colinet:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I read on the mailing list that you're looking for a way to make 
>> Emacs popular again. I thought I could share my idea.
>>
>> I started using emacs a year ago and when I started everything was 
>> really confusing, what is a frame, what is a buffer, how to install 
>> packages, what are major and minor modes, etc.. I wanted to give up 
>> but then I saw a 1 hour talk about Emacs that shows how powerful it 
>> is. Then I was hooked. Unfortunately the sound was no good at all and 
>> it was way too long. I think it could be really benefic for emacs to 
>> have a 5-10 minutes video that would present Emacs not as an old 
>> obscure porgram but as an amazing fresh looking tool that drastically 
>> improves efficiency. I think people nowadays need an out-of-the-box 
>> experience, that's why promoting doom-emacs or spacemacs might be 
>> better than the default Emacs.
>>
>> I think if the video is well realised it could really be a huge win.
>>
>> Stay safe and well,
>>
>> Nathan Colinet
>>
>>
>>
>
> Hi,
>
> thanks bringing that up. Agree such a video might be helpful. The 
> reasons however, why Emacs is a kind of niche nowadays are multiple 
> and complex. Leaving apart all items Emacs itself can't change, there 
> is something which can be done IMO: making Emacs ready for a beginner 
> in programming resp. for non-programmers. Make Emacs appear mannerly 
> as just an editor first. Which also means: at the beginning leave 
> apart all complex stuff useful for advanced programmers only.
>
> For instance at "Introduction" fairly everything in first paragraphs 
> IMHO may be dropped resp. should be moved at later sections. Copy 
> stuff below for the convenience of the reader here.
>
> All the day enjoying Emacs,
> Andreas
>
> Copy:
>
> Introduction
> ************
>
> You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
> self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.  (The ‘G’ in
> GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) is not silent.)
>
>    We call Emacs “advanced” because it can do much more than simple
> insertion and deletion of text.  It can control subprocesses, indent
> programs automatically, show multiple files at once, edit remote files
> like they were local files, and more.  Emacs editing commands operate in
> terms of characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages, as
> well as expressions and comments in various programming languages.
>
>    “Self-documenting” means that at any time you can use special
> commands, known as “help commands”, to find out what your options are,
> or to find out what any command does, or to find all the commands that
> pertain to a given topic.  *Note Help::.
>
>    “Customizable” means that you can easily alter the behavior of Emacs
> commands in simple ways.  For instance, if you use a programming
> language in which comments start with ‘<**’ and end with ‘**>’, you can
> tell the Emacs comment manipulation commands to use those strings (*note
> Comments::).  To take another example, you can rebind the basic cursor
> motion commands (up, down, left and right) to any keys on the keyboard
> that you find comfortable.  *Note Customization::.
>

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Kangas]

Nathan Colinet <colinetnathan98@gmail.com> writes:

> We could find someone on reddit, I think a lot of YouTubers are
> following r/linux. To ensure the video quality GNU or FSF might need to
> pay someone to produce it. I have some ideas about the features of emacs
> the video could highlight.

As far as I know, the FSF doesn't have any money set aside for
advertising Emacs.

We are a volunteer run project, so the way these things happen is
generally that someone just takes it upon themselves to do it.

IMHO, a very well thought out screencast could do the job just as well
as a professionally produced video.  All that is required is a bit of
initiative and creativity, I think, perhaps by asking around for
volunteers to help with certain tasks (for example voice recording of a
manuscript).

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > For instance at "Introduction" fairly everything in first paragraphs 
  > > IMHO may be dropped resp. should be moved at later sections. Copy 
  > > stuff below for the convenience of the reader here.

Perhaps there is no longer a need to inform the public of those
three basic capabilities of Emacs.

Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?

    > You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
    > self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs. 
-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > For instance at "Introduction" fairly everything in first paragraphs 
>   > > IMHO may be dropped resp. should be moved at later sections. Copy 
>   > > stuff below for the convenience of the reader here.
>
> Perhaps there is no longer a need to inform the public of those
> three basic capabilities of Emacs.
>
> Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?
They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature. They usually rely on
external documentation. For the rest, they have it. Some of them are
created with goal to be like Emacs, just to use more familiar scripting
language then Lisp (i.e. Javascript) (VS Code, Brackets, Atom, etc).

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Andreas Röhler]

On 12.05.20 05:12, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>    > > For instance at "Introduction" fairly everything in first paragraphs
>    > > IMHO may be dropped resp. should be moved at later sections. Copy
>    > > stuff below for the convenience of the reader here.
>
> Perhaps there is no longer a need to inform the public of those
> three basic capabilities of Emacs.
>
> Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?
>
>      > You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
>      > self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.

When looking into the net in order to make my point more obvious came 
about this:

The power of Emacs comes from being able to write new commands a [...], 
read and modify commands that are already in Emacs.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 12.05.2020 10:04, Arthur Miller wrote:
> They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
> maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature

Self-introspecting?

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Arthur Miller]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 12.05.2020 10:04, Arthur Miller wrote:
>> They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
>> maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature
>
> Self-introspecting?
Haha, probably :-)

Sorry I am not native english speaker, so I sometimes "guess" some
"international" words, 'coz I am lazy to look 'em up.

RE: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Drew Adams]

> > They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
> > maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature
> 
> Self-introspecting?

self introspecting = introspecting

introspect: "Reflect on one's own thoughts and feelings"

https://www.wordwebonline.com/search.pl?w=introspect

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > The power of Emacs comes from being able to write new commands a [...], 
  > read and modify commands that are already in Emacs.

That is true.  That's what "extensible" refers to.

The question is, is it worth spending a few paragraphs on those points:

    > You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
    > self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.

When I wrote the first Emacs in 1976, these were exciting new advances.
Most users had never imagined such features in an editor.

Maybe today every programmer has seen such features elsewhere, and
responds to that statement with, "ho hum."  If so, maybe we should
delete those paragraphs.

On the other hand, maybe the standard of comparison today is something
hardly extensible at all.  ISTR that Microsoft Turd has macros; can they
support nontrivial extensions?  What about Google Crocks in a browser,
can that support nontrivial extensions?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?
  > They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
  > maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature.

Do people think it is desirable to delete most of that intro text?
It is uder 15 lines; perhaps it is harmless to keep it.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Andreas Röhler]

On 13.05.20 05:55, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>    > The power of Emacs comes from being able to write new commands a [...],
>    > read and modify commands that are already in Emacs.
>
> That is true.  That's what "extensible" refers to.
>
> The question is, is it worth spending a few paragraphs on those points:
>
>      > You are reading about GNU Emacs,
>
> When I wrote the first Emacs in 1976, these were exciting new advances.
> Most users had never imagined such features in an editor.
>
> Maybe today every programmer has seen such features elsewhere, and
> responds to that statement with, "ho hum."  If so, maybe we should
> delete those paragraphs.
>
> On the other hand, maybe the standard of comparison today is something
> hardly extensible at all.  ISTR that Microsoft Turd has macros; can they
> support nontrivial extensions?  What about Google Crocks in a browser,
> can that support nontrivial extensions?
>
>
Assume understand your point. But the question was about didactics. What 
a beginner, starting to write a letter, needs to know? Why Emacs is 
censored having a steep learning curve? All things mentioned in this 
first sentence are probably true. However must admit even after years 
not being sure what "GNU incarnation of the advanced, self-documenting, 
customizable, extensible editor Emacs" should mean. Are there other 
incarnations than GNU incarnation of Emacs thinkable? Instead "GNU 
incarnation of ...Emacs" would understand "Emacs, an incarnation of GNU" 
- whatever GNU means...

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?
>   > They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
>   > maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature.
>
> Do people think it is desirable to delete most of that intro text?
> It is uder 15 lines; perhaps it is harmless to keep it.

I don't think it is very important issue. It is normal to have a bit
longer introductorty text/description about application. It just does
not need to take screen estate on the welcome screen maybe?

By the way, I probably wouldn't try to identify Emacs as just a text
editor longer. Personally I see Emacs as en extensible platform, or
system (not in a sense of that joke of operating system), a tool, or
whatever one might wish to call it. I think it has developed and become
usefull much more then just as a text editor. Also I think it might help
if Emacs developed even further in that direction, as a
"multi-tool/swiss army knife" of human-computer interaction?

I don't use other text editors, so I really don't know how good they are
at other tasks then just text editing. I usually just take a look for
the curiosity sake when a new editor/IDE becomes popular, and then I
usually realize Emacs already has everything I need and just uninstall
the new thing. 

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Kangas]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Do people think it is desirable to delete most of that intro text?
> It is uder 15 lines; perhaps it is harmless to keep it.

I think so, FWIW.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Kangas]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> The question is, is it worth spending a few paragraphs on those points:
>
>     > You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,
>     > self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs.
>
> When I wrote the first Emacs in 1976, these were exciting new advances.
> Most users had never imagined such features in an editor.
>
> Maybe today every programmer has seen such features elsewhere, and
> responds to that statement with, "ho hum."  If so, maybe we should
> delete those paragraphs.

I do think most of that introduction comes off as somewhat uninspired
and mundane if you don't know that backstory, such as:

    you can rebind the basic cursor motion commands (up, down, left and
    right) to any keys on the keyboard that you find comfortable

While some parts are more exciting:

    New commands are simply programs written in the Lisp language, which are
    run by Emacs’s own Lisp interpreter.  Existing commands can even be
    redefined in the middle of an editing session, without having to restart
    Emacs.

I think a rewrite would be in order.  But it's hard to write such a text
well.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

RE: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Drew Adams]

> some parts are more exciting:
> 
>  New commands are simply programs written in the Lisp language,
>  which are run by Emacs’s own Lisp interpreter.  Existing
>  commands can even be redefined in the middle of an editing
>  session, without having to restart Emacs.

Along with the fact that commands can be redefined
and keys can be rebound to different commands, it
might be worth mentioning that (pretty much) _every_
user action/input involves invoking a command.

That's not obvious.  In particular, it's not obvious
that when you insert text by typing you're invoking
`self-insert-command' for each character-key you type.

I say it "might" be worth mentioning.  No, I don't
think this is super important.  But it gives an idea
how extensible Emacs really is - every interaction
involves customizable commands/keys.  Users control
Emacs behavior ubiquitously.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > By the way, I probably wouldn't try to identify Emacs as just a text
  > editor longer. Personally I see Emacs as en extensible platform,

I designed Emacs to be a text editor.

I am disappointed that people extend Emacs ONLY to do other unrelated
jobs while NOT extending the kinds of text editing it will do.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Tim Cross]

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On Wed, 13 May 2020 at 18:50, Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> wrote:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> >
> >   > > Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?
> >   > They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
> >   > maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature.
> >
> > Do people think it is desirable to delete most of that intro text?
> > It is uder 15 lines; perhaps it is harmless to keep it.
>
> I don't think it is very important issue. It is normal to have a bit
> longer introductorty text/description about application. It just does
> not need to take screen estate on the welcome screen maybe?
>
> By the way, I probably wouldn't try to identify Emacs as just a text
> editor longer. Personally I see Emacs as en extensible platform, or
> system (not in a sense of that joke of operating system), a tool, or
> whatever one might wish to call it. I think it has developed and become
> usefull much more then just as a text editor. Also I think it might help
> if Emacs developed even further in that direction, as a
> "multi-tool/swiss army knife" of human-computer interaction?
>
> I don't use other text editors, so I really don't know how good they are
> at other tasks then just text editing. I usually just take a look for
> the curiosity sake when a new editor/IDE becomes popular, and then I
> usually realize Emacs already has everything I need and just uninstall
> the new thing.
>
>
I think this touches on an important point. Emacs is more than an editor.
To an extent, the editing aspects of Emacs are not particularly interesting
and most of the really great editing features of Emacs have been
incorporated into other editors anyway - it is not really a distinguishing
features. The key to what makes Emacs is a combination of extensibility and
self-documenting. For me, what makes Emacs different from nearly all the
alternatives is the ability to create the work environment and work flows I
want rather than conforming to the environment and workflows someone else
has defined. With a little effort, I can have my projects setup so that all
those boring and repetitive tasks are automated using a common framework,
language and interface. plus I get a whole lot of unified and consistent
tools/commands with that same interface, which makes dealing with the ad
hoc stuff faster/easier as well.

Unfortunately, this benefit is not going to be universal for all users. If
you don't have a need for workflows or if your requirement is just for
simple editing of text or if your simply not that interested or are happy
to use separate tools and environments etc, your really not going to see a
lot of benefit from Emacs over other editors. This makes me think that
aiming to make Emacs more popular may be a too generic objective. Perhaps
we need to consider who or what group of users we want Emacs to be popular
with. Should we be trying to identifyt which 'market' Emacs is going to be
most beneficial for and then target that group rather than just tyring to
be 'popular' in the more generic sense?

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 14.05.2020 um 09:38 schrieb Tim Cross:
> On Wed, 13 May 2020 at 18:50, Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> wrote:
>
>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>>> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
>>> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
>>> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>>>
>>>    > > Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?
>>>    > They have pretty much everything but "self-documenting", which should
>>>    > maybe be referred as "self-retrospecting" feature.
>>>
>>> Do people think it is desirable to delete most of that intro text?
>>> It is uder 15 lines; perhaps it is harmless to keep it.
>> I don't think it is very important issue. It is normal to have a bit
>> longer introductorty text/description about application. It just does
>> not need to take screen estate on the welcome screen maybe?
>>
>> By the way, I probably wouldn't try to identify Emacs as just a text
>> editor longer. Personally I see Emacs as en extensible platform, or
>> system (not in a sense of that joke of operating system), a tool, or
>> whatever one might wish to call it. I think it has developed and become
>> usefull much more then just as a text editor. Also I think it might help
>> if Emacs developed even further in that direction, as a
>> "multi-tool/swiss army knife" of human-computer interaction?
>>
>> I don't use other text editors, so I really don't know how good they are
>> at other tasks then just text editing. I usually just take a look for
>> the curiosity sake when a new editor/IDE becomes popular, and then I
>> usually realize Emacs already has everything I need and just uninstall
>> the new thing.
>>
>>
> I think this touches on an important point. Emacs is more than an editor.
> To an extent, the editing aspects of Emacs are not particularly interesting
> and most of the really great editing features of Emacs have been
> incorporated into other editors anyway - it is not really a distinguishing
> features. The key to what makes Emacs is a combination of extensibility and
> self-documenting. For me, what makes Emacs different from nearly all the
> alternatives is the ability to create the work environment and work flows I
> want rather than conforming to the environment and workflows someone else
> has defined. With a little effort, I can have my projects setup so that all
> those boring and repetitive tasks are automated using a common framework,
> language and interface. plus I get a whole lot of unified and consistent
> tools/commands with that same interface, which makes dealing with the ad
> hoc stuff faster/easier as well.
>
> Unfortunately, this benefit is not going to be universal for all users. If
> you don't have a need for workflows or if your requirement is just for
> simple editing of text or if your simply not that interested or are happy
> to use separate tools and environments etc, your really not going to see a
> lot of benefit from Emacs over other editors. This makes me think that
> aiming to make Emacs more popular may be a too generic objective. Perhaps
> we need to consider who or what group of users we want Emacs to be popular
> with. Should we be trying to identifyt which 'market' Emacs is going to be
> most beneficial for and then target that group rather than just tyring to
> be 'popular' in the more generic sense?


A good example how complex stuff might be accessible delivers the 
success of the Python language.  Just watched a video called "Python 
Steering Council Community Address" where some roots of this popularity 
are delivered. For example they have an own section discussing 
user-experience of beginners:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX8fGuh4T_o&feature=youtu.be

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > By the way, I probably wouldn't try to identify Emacs as just a text
>   > editor longer. Personally I see Emacs as en extensible platform,
>
> I designed Emacs to be a text editor.
>
> I am disappointed that people extend Emacs ONLY to do other unrelated
> jobs while NOT extending the kinds of text editing it will do.
Why would you be dissapointed by that? Isn't it great that people make
stuff you haven't thought of with it?

People are extending Emacs for text editing as well, but it already is
quite competent as a text editor. Good job!

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Robert Pluim]

>>>>> On Thu, 14 May 2020 01:14:36 -0400, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> said:

    Richard> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
    Richard> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
    Richard> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

    >> By the way, I probably wouldn't try to identify Emacs as just a text
    >> editor longer. Personally I see Emacs as en extensible platform,

    Richard> I designed Emacs to be a text editor.

    Richard> I am disappointed that people extend Emacs ONLY to do other unrelated
    Richard> jobs while NOT extending the kinds of text editing it will do.

What, specifically, is missing in that area? If youʼre talking about
WYSIWYG-related features, I have free programs that can do that, and I
donʼt use them much directly: I use emacs to generate their format,
then touch up the results afterwards.

Robert

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Thu, 14 May 2020 01:14:36 -0400
> Cc: colinetnathan98@gmail.com, andreas.roehler@online.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> I designed Emacs to be a text editor.
> 
> I am disappointed that people extend Emacs ONLY to do other unrelated
> jobs while NOT extending the kinds of text editing it will do.

If you mean "text" literally, then you may be right.  But if you
include in that editing of program sources, then I'd say we are
definitely making progress in that area, albeit slower than we would
want to.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 14 May 2020 17:38:15 +1000
> Cc: colinetnathan98@gmail.com,
>  Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler@online.de>,
>  Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>, Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> To an extent, the editing aspects of Emacs are not particularly
> interesting and most of the really great editing features of Emacs
> have been incorporated into other editors anyway

I would disagree, at least to some extent.  It is true that many Emacs
features are available today elsewhere, but some surprisingly still
aren't.  For example, what about transposing words or lines with one
or 2 keystrokes?

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Tim Cross]

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On Fri, 15 May 2020 at 00:19, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> > Date: Thu, 14 May 2020 17:38:15 +1000
> > Cc: colinetnathan98@gmail.com,
> >  Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler@online.de>,
> >  Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>, Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> >
> > To an extent, the editing aspects of Emacs are not particularly
> > interesting and most of the really great editing features of Emacs
> > have been incorporated into other editors anyway
>
> I would disagree, at least to some extent.  It is true that many Emacs
> features are available today elsewhere, but some surprisingly still
> aren't.  For example, what about transposing words or lines with one
> or 2 keystrokes?
>

I'm sure we will find some examples, though the ones you cited are
available in a number of editors (for example VS Code C-t = letter,
Shift-Ctl-t = word and Alt-Ctl-T for line transposing Many editors have
been inspired by and have borrowed/copied from Emacs. Features which use to
be only seen in Emacs are now seen in many other editors (column editing,
rectangle cut and paste, transposing letters, words and lines, multiple
cursors, etc. Most editors have some form of plugin or extention mechanism
and people have ported most of the useful features from Emacs. (though
their extension/plugin mechanism is typically much less flexible than
Emacs).

There are certainly some things Emacs still does better with respect to
editing, like editing of binary data or even ascii art etc. It is rare when
I've used another editor and missed a feature that I've not found the
feature is available - I may need to add a plugin or define a key binding
or define a macro (as in keyboard macros not lisp macro). However, in
general, I find these things which Emacs still does better to be really
fringe areas which I rarely use or need. The majority of advanced editing
features provided by emacs are available in most editors with a programming
orientation. In many of these editors, other things which are slightly
difficult to get working consistently in Emacs are available 'out of the
box'. For example, getting font ligatures and colour emojii working in VS
Code is trivial. In Emacs, it is harder and varies depending on which
platform you are on.

VS Code is probably a good example. While I still prefer Emacs, if I'm
really honest, from a purely editing perspective, VS Code is as good and
feature rich. Where it fails is in the ease of extensibility and ability to
customize to fit how I like to work - with VS Code, I need to adjust more
to how VS Code wants to work, but when it comes to just writing source
code, they are both pretty equivalent.


-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[ndame]

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> There are certainly some things Emacs still does better with respect to editing, like editing of binary data or even ascii art etc.

Don't forget that vscode has tons of extensions, people jumped at the opportunity to extend the editor with an easy to use and familiar scripting language (js).

So they can edit hex: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stef-levesque/vscode-hexdump/master/images/hover-dataview.png

And ascii art: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Canna71/vscode-figlet/master/figlet.gif

Vscode has a powerful display engine and a widely used scripting language which is a winning combination. Emacs could close the gap somewhat if it used some existing graphics display engine, instead of reimplementing everything, because Vscode and other tools which use common graphics toolkits get every development for free and can concentrate on developing the editor instead.

> VS Code is probably a good example. While I still prefer Emacs, if I'm really honest, from a purely editing perspective, VS Code is as good and feature rich. Where it fails is in the ease of extensibility and ability to customize to fit how I like to work - with VS Code, I need to adjust more to how VS Code wants to work, but when it comes to just writing source code, they are both pretty equivalent.

Yes, the only thing vscode doesn't have is rapid prototyping, extending the environment quickly. Writing an extension for it is much more cumbersome (no built-in docs for the api either, you have to browse the web for that), but most users don't write extensions anyway, they just want to use existing ones, so this doesn't concern them.

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Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Stefan Monnier]

> Yes, the only thing vscode doesn't have is rapid prototyping, extending the
> environment quickly. Writing an extension for it is much more cumbersome (no
> built-in docs for the api either, you have to browse the web for that), but
> most users don't write extensions anyway, they just want to use existing
> ones, so this doesn't concern them.

Indeed, I think what sets Emacs apart, really, is the effort that's been
made since the very early design to try and abolish the boundary between
"user" and "developer" and make it as easy as possible to get
something going.


        Stefan

RE: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Drew Adams]

> I think what sets Emacs apart, really, is the effort that's been
> made since the very early design to try and abolish the boundary
> between "user" and "developer" and make it as easy as possible
> to get something going.

+1

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[T.V Raman]

But, can you read email in VSCode (yet)
-- 

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Tim Cross]

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On Fri, 15 May 2020 at 03:49, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:

> > Yes, the only thing vscode doesn't have is rapid prototyping, extending
> the
> > environment quickly. Writing an extension for it is much more cumbersome
> (no
> > built-in docs for the api either, you have to browse the web for that),
> but
> > most users don't write extensions anyway, they just want to use existing
> > ones, so this doesn't concern them.
>
> Indeed, I think what sets Emacs apart, really, is the effort that's been
> made since the very early design to try and abolish the boundary between
> "user" and "developer" and make it as easy as possible to get
> something going.
>
>
>         Stefan
>
>
>
+1 and likely the aspect of Emacs we should emphasise. With VS code, you
cannot easily create a workflow with a high level of automation that is
project specific. There are lots of extensions you can add which will deal
with 'standard' workflow components, but no easy way to glue them all
together and implement automated steps.  In Emacs, using and programming
your environment to meet your needs are blurred and enable you to do things
your way, not someone elses way.

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Indeed, I think what sets Emacs apart, really, is the effort that's been
  > made since the very early design to try and abolish the boundary between
  > "user" and "developer" and make it as easy as possible to get
  > something going.

That is a good point to mention.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I would like Emacs to have the features of LibreOffice -- at least for
word processing and slides.

It would take years to get there, but I hope to see it during my lifetime.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> I would like Emacs to have the features of LibreOffice -- at least for
> word processing and slides.
>
> It would take years to get there, but I hope to see it during my lifetime.
What do you mean with slides? Presentations? You can already do
slides-like stuff in org-mode, not as advanced as in Impress, but enough
for many situations. Some presentations are done via pdf-files which you
can show from Emacs. You could even use images to create a slide-show
mimicking a presentation. Or what features do you have in mind?

For some more advanced graphical features Emacs would need better
renderer, ability to display (and script) some graphics, layouting etc.

Why is that important for Emacs? I haven't personally opened an "office"
app for years, unless I had to do something for a customer. I think good
text editor like Emacs is more then fine for most needs. I think people
"need" office apps mostly because of marketing not because they really
need it, especially nowdays when we don't print so much like we did 20
years ago or so. I might be biased here though, it is just my reflection.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
> Date: Fri, 15 May 2020 09:55:16 +0200
> Cc: Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>, colinetnathan98@gmail.com,
>  andreas.roehler@online.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > I would like Emacs to have the features of LibreOffice -- at least for
> > word processing and slides.
> >
> > It would take years to get there, but I hope to see it during my lifetime.
> What do you mean with slides? Presentations? You can already do
> slides-like stuff in org-mode, not as advanced as in Impress, but enough
> for many situations. Some presentations are done via pdf-files which you
> can show from Emacs. You could even use images to create a slide-show
> mimicking a presentation. Or what features do you have in mind?

So maybe what is missing is a manual or a tutorial describing to users
how to create presentations using Org?

> For some more advanced graphical features Emacs would need better
> renderer, ability to display (and script) some graphics, layouting etc.

What is missing for displaying slides?  AFAIK, the current Emacs
display engine is perfectly capable of displaying text with images.

Besides, I'm not sure the produced slides should be displayed in Emacs
in the first place, they can be displayed by some image viewer, of
which I'm sure there are quite a few on any given system.

> Why is that important for Emacs?

IMO, that's not a valid question to ask about Emacs.  We could ask the
same about reading and sending email, displaying calendar and managing
appointments, many Org features, etc. etc.  Emacs users want to do
many jobs in Emacs, and editing documents is a job that's actually
closer to the original Emacs purpose than many others.

> I haven't personally opened an "office" app for years, unless I had
> to do something for a customer. I think good text editor like Emacs
> is more then fine for most needs. I think people "need" office apps
> mostly because of marketing not because they really need it,
> especially nowdays when we don't print so much like we did 20 years
> ago or so. I might be biased here though, it is just my reflection.

Careful: your personal perspective on this stuff is probably heavily
biased by your line of work and your experience.  There are people out
there who write documents of various kinds all day every day.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Arthur Miller]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
>> Date: Fri, 15 May 2020 09:55:16 +0200
>> Cc: Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>, colinetnathan98@gmail.com,
>>  andreas.roehler@online.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> 
>> > I would like Emacs to have the features of LibreOffice -- at least for
>> > word processing and slides.
>> >
>> > It would take years to get there, but I hope to see it during my lifetime.
>> What do you mean with slides? Presentations? You can already do
>> slides-like stuff in org-mode, not as advanced as in Impress, but enough
>> for many situations. Some presentations are done via pdf-files which you
>> can show from Emacs. You could even use images to create a slide-show
>> mimicking a presentation. Or what features do you have in mind?
>
> So maybe what is missing is a manual or a tutorial describing to users
> how to create presentations using Org?
Could be. There are some tutorials/show-offs on youtube, and some
personal blogs, but maybe some more thought and put toghether manual
could help.

>> For some more advanced graphical features Emacs would need better
>> renderer, ability to display (and script) some graphics, layouting etc.
>
> What is missing for displaying slides?  AFAIK, the current Emacs
> display engine is perfectly capable of displaying text with images.
Slides as images (or pdfs), or even just plain text as some org :slide:
does work just fine as currently is in Emacs. I ment more that people
like to have some more elemnts, like lines, arrows, and
other graphical elements in office applications as well as laying out
those elements and text in a bit more advanced way. For example
text boxes in office apps. I am not sure how easy it is to layout images
and have text wrap around it in Emacs and similar. Maybe latex as a
document format could be fine, if Emacs can render final result as a buffer
view without going to file export/import and displaying back image or
pdf. Same for say html. I think, I am not sure. If Emacs could render
render those directly as buffer view while editing it, I think it would
be the word processor a lá "office".

> Besides, I'm not sure the produced slides should be displayed in Emacs
> in the first place, they can be displayed by some image viewer, of
> which I'm sure there are quite a few on any given system.
>
>> Why is that important for Emacs?
>
> IMO, that's not a valid question to ask about Emacs.  We could ask the
> same about reading and sending email, displaying calendar and managing
> appointments, many Org features, etc. etc.  Emacs users want to do
> many jobs in Emacs, and editing documents is a job that's actually
> closer to the original Emacs purpose than many others.
Fair enough, indeed :-).

>> I haven't personally opened an "office" app for years, unless I had
>> to do something for a customer. I think good text editor like Emacs
>> is more then fine for most needs. I think people "need" office apps
>> mostly because of marketing not because they really need it,
>> especially nowdays when we don't print so much like we did 20 years
>> ago or so. I might be biased here though, it is just my reflection.
>
> Careful: your personal perspective on this stuff is probably heavily
> biased by your line of work and your experience.  There are people out
> there who write documents of various kinds all day every day.
Yeah, I know, I am aware of my modest personal needs. It is just a
reflection on what I see over and over again: when my friends
ask me which office to get, I tell them they good enough with
included WordPad that comes with Windows, or to download Libre/Open
Office if they need more. Most of them bought anyway MS Office, because
it is "the best", even though they will use just like 1% of feature in
it.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
> Date: Fri, 15 May 2020 12:43:13 +0200
> Cc: rpluim@gmail.com, colinetnathan98@gmail.com, andreas.roehler@online.de,
>  rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > What is missing for displaying slides?  AFAIK, the current Emacs
> > display engine is perfectly capable of displaying text with images.
> Slides as images (or pdfs), or even just plain text as some org :slide:
> does work just fine as currently is in Emacs. I ment more that people
> like to have some more elemnts, like lines, arrows, and
> other graphical elements in office applications as well as laying out
> those elements and text in a bit more advanced way.

We have svg.el for that, can't it be utilized?

> For example text boxes in office apps. I am not sure how easy it is
> to layout images and have text wrap around it in Emacs and
> similar.

Shouldn't be a problem, we have image slices since Emacs 21.

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[H. Dieter Wilhelm]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I would like Emacs to have the features of LibreOffice -- at least for
> word processing and slides.

I assume you mean WYSIWYG abilities, like dropping images and moving
them around or drawing over them.  Do you then also want a "visually"
guided graphical interface like in the LibreOffice components?

     Dieter
-- 
Best wishes
H. Dieter Wilhelm
Zwingenberg, Germany

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[H. Dieter Wilhelm]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> What do you mean with slides? Presentations? You can already do
> slides-like stuff in org-mode, not as advanced as in Impress, but enough
> for many situations. Some presentations are done via pdf-files which you
> can show from Emacs. You could even use images to create a slide-show
> mimicking a presentation. Or what features do you have in mind?

FYI: Nowadays you are able to accomplish more refined presentations with
LaTeX and the presentation package Beamer (among others) than all the
Office Applications.

You can do all the modern, fancy presentation stuff and moreover
including animations, videos and 3D objects (OK only Adobe Reader
supports 3D at the moment).

> For some more advanced graphical features Emacs would need better
> renderer, ability to display (and script) some graphics, layouting etc.

I suggest to use the LaTeX Tikz package for doing the graphics.  It has
also the advantage that the graphical fonts are consistent with the text
and mathematics.

  http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/

> Why is that important for Emacs? I haven't personally opened an "office"
> app for years, unless I had to do something for a customer. I think
> good

The same here, even in my company I'm using org-mode LaTeX exports for
reports and presentations.

> text editor like Emacs is more then fine for most needs. I think people
> "need" office apps mostly because of marketing not because they really
> need it, especially nowdays when we don't print so much like we did 20
> years ago or so. I might be biased here though, it is just my reflection.

I'm not sure.  Could it be that the majority of people are not really
capable to work in abstract ways (like programming)?  I observe that
most of my colleagues and acquaintances are not willing or are hardly
able to operate programs without "visual guidance".  For example our
designers are rather using the mouse cascading into menus instead of
memorising and applying predefined keyboard shortcuts!

     Dieter
-- 
Best wishes
H. Dieter Wilhelm
Zwingenberg, Germany

Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Ben McGinnes]

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On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 11:25:31PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
> I would like Emacs to have the features of LibreOffice -- at least
> for word processing and slides.

That's ambitious ...

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)?

> It would take years to get there, but I hope to see it during my
> lifetime.

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.

Both of those open formats[1] are based on XML.  So there's already
plenty of avenues for generating those more complicated formats from
something more readily edited by Emacs now.

OTOH, there are reasons I almost never use Emacs to write fiction and,
though I do use it in some aspects of preparing or making minor edits
of the pre-publication source files (which are in another XML format),
it's not really the primary tool there either.  Still, my use case is
fairly niche because most word processor users (and *all* slide
presentation users) don't need to care about traditional publishing
standards.

So, edge cases like mine aside, you can probably do a lot of what you
want now.  Though I suspect the org-mode project is in a better
position to make that a reality right now.


Regards,
Ben

 1. Including MS's formats out of practicality; let's skip the quirks
    of their license since people on this list either are, or should
    already be, aware of all that.

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Re: Making Emacs popular again with a video

[Ben McGinnes]

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On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 12:11:27AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
>> 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)?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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 
> 
> 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 ‘ or ’ instead of ',
except when the latter is just an apostrophe - though that does get a
little more finicky sometimes, and “ or ” instead of ").  As 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.

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