From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alex Schroeder Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Is Emacs very alive, active and improving? Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 20:13:09 +0200 Organization: Gnus News User Services Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1381688430 8246 80.91.229.3 (13 Oct 2013 18:20:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 18:20:30 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 13 20:20:34 2013 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 1VVQHK-00013H-Nf for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 13 Oct 2013 20:20:34 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34193 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VVQHJ-0002Lm-UN for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 13 Oct 2013 14:20:34 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!uio.no!quimby.gnus.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 46 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 178-83-163-103.dynamic.hispeed.ch Original-X-Trace: quimby.gnus.org 1381687989 18934 178.83.163.103 (13 Oct 2013 18:13:09 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@quimby.gnus.org Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 18:13:09 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (darwin) Cancel-Lock: sha1:tk3PiB2K5VuSSxALhdA0wQauYF0= Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:201731 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:94000 Archived-At: This thread seems appropriate to repost the following important message. From: PerAbrahamsen Newsgroups: news:comp.emacs, news:alt.religion.emacs Subject: Re: what's so fun about emacs? Date: 06 Mar 2000 10:03:44 +0100 Organization: The ChurchOfEmacs User-Agent: Gnus/5.0804 (Gnus v5.8.4) Emacs/20.4 [...] Emacs has so much power that nobody will ever master it completely. You can always be a stronger user with Emacs. With a "simple" editor like pico or notepad, you will quickly master it completely, which means that it will not allow you to grow further. Sure, it will take a new user a little longer to be productive with Emacs than Pico, but by starting with Emacs he will have an editor that will grow with him for the rest of his life. [...] 20 MB is 1 cent worth of disc space. For that 1 cent, you get the most powerful text editor in the world, an IDE that supports more programming languages "out of the box" than all other IDEs in the world combined, the most feature-rich News and Mail reader ever, a web browser, a calendar that knows more cultures than you have heard of, and your own personal psychotherapist. If you think 1 cent is too much for a text editor that has been specially optimized for every text processing need in your remaining life, you ought to reevaluate your value system. [...] What you call "Windows" is just one of many window systems that has come in and out of fashion during the lifetime of Emacs. Emacs (in one version or another) has supported most of them, SunView, NeWS, X10, X11 (Open Look, Athena, Motif), PM, Win32, Mac. Emacs has provided a sound foundation that has allowed programmers to be productive with all these, and will also provide a foundation for whatever window system will be hot tomorrow. What Emacs doesn't do is to give up that foundation in order to follow the latest trend. Instead, it incorporates what is good and compensates for the rest. This -- of course -- will make Emacs feel "old" for the followers of hype, but the wise will see its intrinsic power and lasting value.