Re: [comp.emacs] "Emacs" defined in Collins English Dictionary

[foo experimental account <bob@rattlesnake.com>]

When you see a `login' prompt, you can start with Emacs just as you
can start with BASH or X.  In fact, I am writing this from such an
Emacs, user `foo', not from an instance of Emacs running in X under
user `bob' as you might guess from my Reply-to line and signature.

Kevin Rodgers writes, 

    Emacs can be an integrating environment, and it does have both
    graphical and command line interfaces.  But it is definitely a
    text editor.

There is no doubt Emacs can be an integrating environment.  Similarly,
BASH can be an integrating environment.  Although it lacks a graphical
interface, with its libraries, for example those for ed or vi, it also
is definitely a text editor.

Indeed, no one wants an integrating user environment that lacks some
way of editing text, moving files, evoking interpreted commands, and
evoking commands written in compiled languages.

    The Emacs manual has the correct definition ...

Why do you think it has the correct definition?  After all, RMS said
that moving files is a form of editing.  Indeed, I agree, such actions
are a form of editing.  But few speak that way.  Most people speak of
renaming a file as different from changing a word within a file.

And while the Emacs manual has room to define each of its terms, such
as `advanced', a dictionary entry does not.

I like thi's comment:

    emacs seeps into every nook and cranny, ... explicitly changing
    ... the perception of all those bits by its users ...

    people who don't understand this initially do so eventually ...

but the change takes time.

A dictionary entry has little space and its readers little time.

Certainly, as Nic Ferrier said, we are in religious territory when we
argue over what makes for a good dictionary entry for people who know
nothing of Emacs.  

But that does not mean religious arguments are irrelevant.  After all,
one argument in the US is whether self-replicating entities have the
capacity to make changes when replicating, and the implications of
that, or whether their replication produces entities that must be
similar (and implications).  If you conclude the latter, you can
safely cut your budget for research on the growth of drug resistance
among germs.  The argument over Emacs' definition in a dictionary
entry is less significant.

But it is not completely insignificant.  The grammar in a command line
interface like BASH is different from the grammar in a graphical user
interface.  Currently, those two environments provide the two most
commonly perceived grammars.  (I mean grammar here as a linguist does,
as a way of structuring representations.)

The grammar of a virtual lisp machine is different.  (Not hugely
different, but different enough.)  That is what this argument is
about:  what grammars should people commonly perceive as being
suitable for integrated environments, for what can come up when they
type their account name and password to a login prompt?

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                         
    bob@rattlesnake.com                         GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  http://www.teak.cc