From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: What are Emacs best uses? Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 20:08:56 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Message-ID: <8761van5mv.fsf@informatimago.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1376331018 8612 80.91.229.3 (12 Aug 2013 18:10:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 18:10:18 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Aug 12 20:10:20 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1V8wZO-0007pB-UA for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 12 Aug 2013 20:10:19 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:51452 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1V8wZO-0001B2-EN for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 12 Aug 2013 14:10:18 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 76 Original-X-Trace: individual.net qpyMCWpHyxQUeho5QucTjgED3iO9OOURxhH1Zw4A2kdfWUn1nl Cancel-Lock: sha1:MmRjODgwMGUxMTEzOWY3NGQ0YWFlZjVjY2E4YTA4YjdiMTA3NDQyNg== sha1:lvIBYVW9yRFXkKTnkci1PHyiJI0= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.2 (gnu/linux) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:200557 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:92824 Archived-At: Jorge <1gato0a@gmail.com> writes: > Hi. What are the best uses of Emacs? I currently use it to compose emails, > manage files, to edit LaTeX, and to edit source code and configuration files. > But Emacs seems to be mediocre at viewing PDFs. Evince has better search. > > What is Emacs really good for? Is it a good personal information manager? > Can you manage your information (todo, grocery list, etc.) and sync with a > smartphone? If you can't sync with a smartphone, how do you manage the > grocery list? > > Is it a good calendar? Can you easily collaborate with colleagues who use > Google Calendar? > > Is it a good email reader? Does it work with gmail? > > Is Emacs adapting well to the changing computing landscape? > > Thank you for your attention. Well, I would say that emacs is bad at everything, BUT a single thing: it is good at being modified. So if there's something bad in it that you don't like, you can easily modify it by writting a few emacs lisp functions, and make it acceptable for you, for that task. Of course, this now implies a dynamic process where emacs has been and is continuously improved, and therefore where it becomes good at some things. But it's difficult to characterize them, since it has evolved and continues to evolve purely in accordance to the needs of its users, since its users are also its programmers (at least potentially). Ok, so let's see what other programs beside emacs I use, perhaps that'll give us a hint at what emacs is bad: - mplayer - firefox - xterm+screen - acroread Ok, so emacs is bad at playing videos. Actually, it's still rather bad at displaying dynamic 2D pictures, never mind animated 2D pictures. Ok, so emacs is bad at interpreting javascript and css to display web pages (even for pure text web browsing, most people use w3m, and external browser, rather than w3 an emacs lisp browser). Ok, so emacs is bad at running a terminal emulator. M-x term RET /usr/bin/screen RET is no good. That said, you can use emacs as a dumb terminal, and even open several such dumb terminals, so you don't really need screen. Ok, so emacs is bad at displaying PDF. Again, the rendering is actually done by xpdf or ghostscript, and emacs just displays (badly) the image. Now, it's quite natural that emacs fails in this domain, since it's a TEXT editor from the start, not an IMAGE editor. But this gives a strong hint that emacs capabilities could be vastly extended, by just providing an OpenGL (modern graphics) API accessible from emacs lisp. (create-graphic-buffer "This Evening Movie" (movie-play "/movies/scifi/starwars-4.avi")) -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/