Re: Emacs in a Chrome Tab? (related to NaCl Support for Emacs discussion)

[Paul Michael Reilly <pmr@pajato.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2211 bytes --]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Antoine Levitt <antoine.levitt@gmail.com>wrote:

Isn't that an issue to be tackled by the window managers? Why would it
> be emacs-specific? I'm not sure I see the point anyway.
>

Window Managers?  Maybe you missed my point.

A little history: for years engineers from coast to coast (me on the East
and Steve Yegge on the West) have primarily used two tools every day: Emacs
and (some) Browser (Chrome for Steve and I).  Steve once asked the pointed
question: Wouldn't it be great if Emacs could browse (taking for granted
that Emacs w3 doesn't count as a real browser) or a Browser could do what
Emacs does?  I answered the question with a definite Yes and posited that
Emacs will never provide a real WWW browsing experience, at least not in
our lifetime and not in Gnu Emacs' current implementation.  So clearly that
leaves Emacs to run inside the Browser.  But this was clearly not a
priority with the Brpwser developers so the two wonderful tools have lived
apart lo these many years.  With the advent of NativeClient, there is now a
more likely path to realizing Emacs functionality inside a browser tab but
that path could be filled with all kinds of roadside bombs that will make
it impossible to get there from here.  To me this means targeting Gnu Emacs
to build on a "NativeClient" platform and thus producing a set of bits that
will be found in an App Store like the Chrome Web Store.

Another relevant piece of history:  I tried using a ChromeBook device last
year.  Other than the fact that they were under powered and I could not run
Emacs on them, it is a great model --- no machine maintenance, cheap, easy
access to apps (lots of freely available software) and a very simple
interface.  Emacs in a tab would make a ChromeBook much more attractive.
 And Emacs in a tab would be able to leverage browser APIs to a much higher
degree than we see in Emacs out of a tab.  Now it might be the case that
you don't see the point in a ChromeBook device or Chrome OS software model.
 If so you can take comfort in the fact that that probably puts you in a
90% category.  But then, on the other hand, didn't IE own 90% of the
browser market a short while ago? :-)

-pmr

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2616 bytes --]