Re: A femtolisp based emacs clone

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 10:52 AM, James K. Lowden
<jklowden@speakeasy.net> wrote:

> Imagine if "emacs --daemon" opened a TCP port instead of a unix domain
> socket.  You start emacsclient on whatever gadget you have.  Maybe
> it's a Windows box; maybe it's an iPad.  Maybe there's a javascript
> implementation, and it runs in the browser.   You connect to your
> editor daemon, deal with your document.  Save, exit, disconnect.

This is an interesting idea but you’d have to deal with the issue of
drawing the line: what runs on server and what runs on client.

The one extreme we have now with Tramp is that the server only knows
enough to read and write files, and the client does all the editing.
This requires the client to transfer the file back and forth, and it
is clunky if you already work on the server via ssh and need to edit a
file. (You have to switch context and direct your local Emacs to visit
a specially-formatted filename.)

The other extreme is that the client only does low-level display and
input, and all the editing and rendering happens server-side. This is
available with X forwarding. However this requires all customizations
to also reside on the server, which is unrealistic.

The sweet spot would keep the editor state and basic editing functions
on the server and run display, input and customizations on the client.