Re: a look at the browser scene & emacs

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com> writes:

> News about the browser world
> http://www.macworld.com/article/139022/2009/02/safari4firstlook.html?t=232
>
> emacs really needs to keep up.
>
> The IDE idea, from 1990s to 2000, basically reduced emacs market share
> from perhaps more than 50% in the early 1990s to maybe 1% today among
> professional programers.
>
> emacs today has lots of problems. Many of the “emacs way”, are
> technically inferior. But the nice elisp system holds it back still.
>
> The way for emacs to advance, is to get more people to use emacs.
> Emacs users today are already just the very small clique, half of
> which are perhaps over 40. With these small circle of people, every
> idea that's not “emacs way” gets stamped out.

Or gets adapted to the Emacs way.  The result is that people get one
consistent tool.

> Emacs 22 took a few major step, by having syntax highlighting on by
> default, and CUA mode as a option. Emacs 23 took it further,

Emacs 23 is not yet finished.

> by having cursor move by visual line, and have highlight selection on
> by default. I presume that in emacs 24 might have CUA mode on by
> default...

It quite certainly won't.

> but these changes are happening quite late.

> The emacs on the mac, in particular Aquamac emacs and Carbon emacs,
> did significant job in saving emacs from oblivion.

I disagree.  That's something only a Mac-centric person could say.  The
cross-platform upstream code foldback has been minimal.

> There are a lot needs to be done, especially on the Windows platform
> because it is used by most people.

Platform-specific additions are a dead end since they tend to be
single-person efforts that die out once the person can't be interested
anymore.

-- 
David Kastrup