From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: What improvements would be truly useful? Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2018 23:43:57 -0500 Message-ID: References: <87inaiss6l.fsf@web.de> <6FCF6ACA-4F29-4B6B-BE9D-D7130C6E9495@gnu.org> <87fu5moe4c.fsf@web.de> <877eqyocro.fsf@web.de> <83zi3uz4nb.fsf@gnu.org> <0b1dd3fa-e0b0-ed20-a256-dd92d1c1826f@dancol.org> <8bc3c4c7-dfc7-987a-95e7-bd309e2326c6@cs.ucla.edu> <03118DC0-39DA-4AB5-980E-A33809B9A5EE@raeburn.org> <83sh9es8jw.fsf@gnu.org> <2cdaa88f-f31e-e05c-a940-d83e25c9c167@dancol.org> <919bf465a7eecad7669fa29762f5770b.squirrel@dancol.org> <87o9jy9uq4.fsf@mbork.pl> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1520570572 12085 195.159.176.226 (9 Mar 2018 04:42:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2018 04:42:52 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Marcin Borkowski Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Mar 09 05:42:48 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1eu9rj-00032C-Mm for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 09 Mar 2018 05:42:47 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:43219 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eu9tk-0005Rp-Gy for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 23:44:52 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:60774) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eu9sz-0005RW-F7 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 23:44:06 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eu9sv-0000uI-BP for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 23:44:05 -0500 Original-Received: from pruche.dit.umontreal.ca ([132.204.246.22]:37373) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eu9sv-0000u4-3y for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 23:44:01 -0500 Original-Received: from pastel.home (lechon.iro.umontreal.ca [132.204.27.242]) by pruche.dit.umontreal.ca (8.14.7/8.14.1) with ESMTP id w294hvsW020537; Thu, 8 Mar 2018 23:43:57 -0500 Original-Received: by pastel.home (Postfix, from userid 20848) id 3855660559; Thu, 8 Mar 2018 23:43:57 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <87o9jy9uq4.fsf@mbork.pl> (Marcin Borkowski's message of "Thu, 08 Mar 2018 21:29:39 +0100") X-NAI-Spam-Flag: NO X-NAI-Spam-Threshold: 5 X-NAI-Spam-Score: 0 X-NAI-Spam-Rules: 2 Rules triggered EDT_SA_DN_PASS=0, RV6238=0 X-NAI-Spam-Version: 2.3.0.9418 : core <6238> : inlines <6474> : streams <1780858> : uri <2604773> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 132.204.246.22 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 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.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:223528 Archived-At: > Interesting. I have a very similar sentiment, though I think it is > quite irrational. > Is mu4e, Org-mode, Calc, or dunnet also "not Emacs"? If not, how is it > different than a word processor? I don't think I can clearly pin-point the problem, but I think the issue has to do with hiding information: WYSIWYG hides information, in the sense that there are many different documents with the same visual appearance, so the user needs to *guess* what is the underlying document's structure in order to know what his actions will really do. A typical example is the beginning/end of a bold text which is only implicitly represented by the fact that some text is bold and other isn't, but that doesn't let you easily tell whether a new word inserted between a bold work and a non-bold word will be bold or not. Of course Emacs can also hide information (as text-properties, as invisible text, as data stored in buffer-local variables, ...) but most packages follow a design where as little info as possible is hidden. Indeed, whenever I hide such information, I think it over many times because I know there's a very strong chance that users won't like it. Also when it comes to data that we edit, hiding information either means hiding it as invisible text (which tends to be fiddly, so it's used fairly sparingly), or it implies using a complex procedure to `find` and to `save` the buffer in order to translate between the file contents and the in-buffer contents. This complexity is a strong encouragement not to go down that route. Stefan