From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim X Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: `woman' can't be used outside emacs? Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:34:01 +1100 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <87psadxieu.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: dough.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1166686920 12203 80.91.229.10 (21 Dec 2006 07:42:00 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 07:42:00 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 21 08:42:00 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by dough.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1GxIYu-0005gx-Tm for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 21 Dec 2006 08:41:57 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GxIYu-0001fD-DH for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 21 Dec 2006 02:41:56 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsserver.news.garr.it!kanaga.switch.ch!switch.ch!feeder2.ecngs.de!ecngs!feeder.ecngs.de!newsfeed.freenet.de!feeder.news-service.com!feeder.news-service.com!138.199.65.86.MISMATCH!sn-xt-ams-06!sn-xt-ams-03!sn-post-ams-01!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.91 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:yaupHhaENdJR2poMuJx6a1nyv3Y= Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 66 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:144192 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:39795 Archived-At: Ronald writes: > Eli Zaretskii wrote: >>> From: Ronald >>> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help >>> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:31:25 +0800 >>> >>> hope not... >> >> `woman' is an Emacs Lisp package, so it can only be used inside Emacs. > > Emacs tries to do almost everything when it is possible. > I can't understand why it does this way. > Maybe I should learn some lisp first. Its a matter of taste really. Emacs isn't (for most) just an editor - thats why the icon often seen associated with it is the "Kitchen sink" - as in the expression "Everything but the kitchen sink". Some people think this is great, others think its rediculous. To put things in a bit of context though - emacs was doing a lot of very cool stuff while many other users were struggling with quite limited shells and window managers with very little functionality (or in a basic console). At this time, it was really very useful to be able to do different things without having to exit your editor or suspend it or shell out to do things like check your mail, surf the web or look at man pages. Others argue that emacs goes against the Unix philosophy of having utilities/programs that do one thing really well and you obtain higher functionality by linking them together with various shell facilities and scripts etc. At a couple of conferences I've been to, they have had competitions and games in which there are usually two teams - emacs on one side and vi users on the other. These two groups sort of reflect the different philosophies. To some extent, with virtual consoles, window managers with virtual desktops and the increased sophistication of many apps, it can be harder to justify using emacs for everything. However, I like the constant standard interface and the ease with which you can move data from one app to another without leaving emacs. for example, I use planner-mode quite extensively because it allows me to manage all my project information in one place and I can easily create hyperlinks from project pages to e-mail messages (VM), contact database (bbdb), web pages (w3m), text files (bookmarks), calendar/diary, time tracking (timelog), gnats etc. The other thing is that once you get to know elisp, extending or changing emacs' functionality is so easy, its just simpler to do it in emacs than actually develop something else - especially as often the most boring and time consuming part of creating a new app or bit of functionality is the interface and with emacs, most of this is already done. I even know people that use emacs as their window manager under X - instead of an exec fvwm (or whatever) in their .xsession file, they have an exec emacs. As a blind user, I use a package called emacspeak, which provides sophisticated speech feedback that allows me to do things that under Windows I could only do with an expensive commercial app. Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au