Re: Emacs users a dying breed?

["Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>]

Philipp Haselwarter <philipp@haselwarter.org> writes:

> Emacs does not contradict the philosophy /per se/, but sometimes I wish
> Emacs was more of a low level utility. As it stands, Emacs does many
> small tasks very well. One aspect that makes the workflow particularly
> pleasant is that all these tools work together so well. Take the
> kill-ring for example: It is by far the most powerful clipboard facility
> I've used. But I'd like to be able to use it in all my applications, not
> only those written in elisp. Emacs' entirely customizable key system is
> another example of a tool that I'd like to have everywhere on my
> desktop.
>
> As it currently stands, all of the (elisp) programs that want to
> leverage the power of Emacs' "global facilities" have to run in the same
> main process. But there is a price to pay for mixing the core features
> with the high-level programs:
>
>  - concurrency/locking
>    the classic example being programs that do networking and block the
>    whole session
>
>  - shared state ("everything is global")
>    - usability: huge buffer lists result in requiring window-manager
>      like capabilities
>    - configuration: a common look of the GUI
>    - stability: one misbehaving program can blow up the whole session
>    - task parallelism: most programs are intended to have only one
>      running instance per session (ex.: a gnus for work, one for private
>      mail; debugging with several instances of gud simultaneously)
>    - security: I want my email client to know my IMAP password, but not
>      my IRC client
>
>  - auxiliary tasks
>    tasks that are already solved on the desktop are duplicated, such as
>    window and workspace management

Common Lisp offers more (potential) solutions to these problems.
See for example Climacs and McClim.
But more work is needed.

That said, nothing prevents you to run several instances of emacs.  I
usually run three: programming, erc, gnus.  

When you use StumpWM, you can define your own window manager key
bindings and have a CL REPL into your window manager available.

I could only encourage you to embed ECL into all the applications you
use.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.