Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de>]

"A. Lucien Meyers" <nospam.look@replyto.please.because.this.is.invalid> writes:

> alkibiades@gmx.de (Oliver Scholz):
>>  "Michael J. Barillier" <blackwolf@pcisys.net> writes:
[...]
>> > Anyone have an opinion[3] on W3 vs. emacs-w3m?
>>  
>>  IMHO Emacs/W3 feels a lot more emacsish. Well, it is written in Elisp
>>  anyways. I really wish it would be more actively developed, because
>>  actually it is my favourite browser. And yes, I know emacs-w3m and I
>>  use it as a last resort, when Emacs/W3 fails to render a page. I am
>>  not happy with this, though.
>
> Why not, Oliver?  w3m works and works well. w3 does not.  Basta.

*hehehe* I don't think that this "Basta" is well applied on a piece of
free software. :-) I would read that statement rather as "Emacs/W3
still needs a lot of work before it is reliable and usable as your
main browser."

[Actually on my system Emacs/W3 is not reliable only in cases, where
emacs-w3m is not reliable, too: in dealing with images and some
advanced css stuff (Come to think about it, I doubt that emacs-w3m
even tries to address the latter). So the main disadvantage is that
Emacs/w3 is slow. Very slow, to be sure.]

I do not want say anything bad against emacs-w3m, but it feels like
the interface to an external console application. (Probably, because
it is one.) While Emacs/W3 -- slow and incomplete and imperfect as it
may be -- has at least the potential to be a full fledged graphical
(!) web browser integrated in Emacs.

I envision Emacs/W3 as the equivalent to Gnus in the far future: the
slowest but most powerful and extensible html browser out
there. O.k. maybe this is rather dreaming ...

But apart from that, I'd like to see it in a broader context: I am
pretty sure that Emacs will get more and more word processing
facilities in the future. I see Emacs/W3 as a component of the Emacs
Integrated Text Processing and Rendering System. As I read W. Perry's
papers about the future of Emacs/W3, he seems to have something like
that in mind.

It is true that Emacs/W3 has suffered some bit rott, because nobody
seems to develop it actively. But this will not change, if we allow it
to become a public opionion that Emacs/W3 should be disregarded.

Finally the OP got the religious flame war he asked for. :-)

> BTW w3m also works quite well as a stand-alone browser under X.

Outside of Emacs I tend to be a lynx fan.

    Oliver
-- 
14 Brumaire an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!