Is Emacs becoming Word?

[Greg Novak <novak@ucolick.org>]

As a longtime emacs user, I would like to register a complaint about
the direction of Emacs.  This is probably a cry in the wilderness, but
here goes:

Starting with Emacs21, the program has been creeping toward becoming a
WYSIWYG editor, instead of sticking to its roots as a _TEXT_ editor.

Some of these features are cool and useful: Eg, I use the ability to
display PNG files in a buffer to look at previews of math I've typeset
with Latex in the same buffer as the Latex source.  Cool, and useful.

While I'm not against implementing these wacky new feature, I request
that they remain _off by default_.  Today when I was editing source
code and tried to type pi/2 in a buffer, Emacs replaced it with some
special character that appeared as "1/2" as a single character.
Needless to say, this is not what I wanted and I find it quite
offensive that this is happening while editing source code.  

The other day I was editing Lisp code and found that instead of the
usual paren highlighting, Emacs was highlighting the entire enclosed
expression.  This is nice, and I can see how some people would find it
useful, but I'm used to the usual, subtle, paren highlighting.
Therefore it seemed like my code had just gotten back from Las
Vegas.  Again, I would have preferred "off by default."

I've had a long, sometimes rocky, but mostly loving relationship with
Emacs.  I find these developments troubling.

Ok, that's all.  Thanks for reading.
Greg