From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Emanuel Berg Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Emacs and Unix (was: Re: Elisp addiction not as bad in light of Linux forkoholism) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 04:42:36 +0100 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: <87lhmdh6tv.fsf_-_@debian.uxu> References: <873891sgaw.fsf@debian.uxu> <87oarp9sk4.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1418355928 3421 80.91.229.3 (12 Dec 2014 03:45:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 03:45:28 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Dec 12 04:45:18 2014 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 1XzHAL-00089k-Pg for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 12 Dec 2014 04:45:17 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55370 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XzHAL-00030v-30 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 11 Dec 2014 22:45:17 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!goblin1!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 55 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: feB02bRejf23rfBm51Mt7Q.user.speranza.aioe.org Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.4 (gnu/linux) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:K88Ih74SPmMUpzNnzyQrReD1kCI= Mail-Copies-To: never Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:209258 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:101537 Archived-At: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" writes: > I find it is an essential unixism Speaking of Unix and Emacs, many Unix devotees like to bring up the Unix software philosophy, that should amount to * software stick to their field, and carry out their particular task and nothing else, and that task can be very simple indeed * but all software share the same interface - this is arguments, pipes, streams, redirection, perhaps even shell features like backticks and so on * and data is always the same: text This means you can combine simple software to do more and more complicated things. People talk about "modular" software, but this toolchain architecture is by definition modular. Question is: is Emacs "Unix" as well? Problem is, the Unix philosophy applies best to batch software, like CLI computation, old-school black-box computing where data in one form is inputted, and then the same data, but modified or arranged differently, is outputted. My gut feeling is that Emacs could be Unix only interactive, and that the text stream data type is the Emacs buffer. I mean, it is not important for me that Emacs is Unix, I know there are emacses on many other OSs, but one sure sees similarities of approaches with the "one interface, one data type", not to mention the practical side to have a text editor to navigate and interact with as system that is all a bunch of textfiles. But to some degree, I think Emacs is cooler and more advanced than Unix. The strength of the Unix system architecture - that everything are files and processes - must have been very hard figuring out, but once there it is a straightforward implementation of a simple program. Emacs on the other hand is not Unix at all when it comes to processes and such. But of course it wouldn't make sense to make Unix to run on top of Unix... -- underground experts united