The elephant in the room and the Guix Bang.

[Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu>]

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Hello,

...I'm talking about Emacs.

In <87bkdzssgm.fsf@gmail.com> [1] Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

[1] https://yhetil.org/guix/87bkdzssgm.fsf@gmail.com/

[...]

> people are already engaging for improving the accessibility of editors
> other than Emacs

Simon gave me the opportunity to realize (once again) that IMO there is
a foundamental misconception regarding Emacs.

What is Emacs, exacly: is it an editor?

I feel that a great deal of friction on the matter is due to the fact
that Emacs is usually defined as an /editor/ (OK text editor, but it
makes no difference)... **also** in its official page:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

 An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more.
 
 At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp
 programming language with extensions to support text editing.

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
(https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/)

IMO to define Emacs as a sort of «text editor on steroids with batteries
included (Emacs Lisp)» does not represent the real nature of the
program; an /effective/ definition would be:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

 An extensible, customizable, free/libre user interface.
 
 At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp
 programming language, with extensions to use it as an interface to text
 editing functions and many, many more: MUA, web browser, task
 organizer...

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

To define Emacs as a /user interface/ it's not just a cool way to
"market it", it means to classify its /unique/ (?) user interface design
as one among all the historical instances of user interfaces:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

1. batch interface
2. command line interface
3. SAA User Interface or Text-Based User Interface
4. graphical user interface
5. (editor note) web user interface

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface#History)

Someone may consider Emacs "just" a "text-based user interface (UI)"
(point 3. of the above mentioned list) like the ones using curses and
alike (e.g. vim, mutt, ranger, Norton Commander and so on) but IMO Emacs
implements a very different design, centered around a specific UI
element called "emacs buffer".

I consider Emacs as a 6th class of user interface :-D

Just to bring my limited personal experience: I was a mutt+vim user for
email management, ranger for file management... and so on, and since I
was was **very** happy with my vim user experience when editing text,
for a very long time I looked at Emacs as "just" another text editor I
didn't need, because **as text editors** both vim, Emacs and alike are
/very/ powerful and I was never ever interested for just a sec to the
funny "editor war" (and similar "wars").

Then, one day, moved by curiosity and the fact that the Emacs interface
is /integrated/ in the notmuch mail indexer I was already using, I
started using Emacs as my preferred /user interface/ for notmuch... and
some year later here I am, trying to use the Emacs interface for as much
computing activities I can.

Now I see Emacs in a very different way.

Incidentally (?), AFAIU Emacs was the Guile IDE (integrated development
environment, not text editor) used by Ludovic when he started
programming Guix; he and probably some (many?) of the contributors was
so happy with their tool that they started sharing their configuration
snippets, as usual amoung a community of enthusiastic users... after
many refinements and maybe some Emacs extentions progamming, they was so
proud that they decided to recommend the same (set of) tool /and/
configuration to other _collegues_, the famous "perfect setup" described
in the Guix manual.

I'm also suspecting that the spark that started the "Guix Bang" in
Ludovic's mind, the very moment he realized nix could be better
_extended_ using Guile in place of it's DSL, was /caused/ by the fact he
was a Lisp programmer, the specific /dialect/ probably did not matter.
But I'm just guessing.

Now I see Guix in a different way. :-)

In this context: is the Guix project biased in recommending using Emacs
(a Lisp interpreter and compiler for Emacs Lisp) to contributors?  I
don't think so.

I'd rather say that - as in many other organizations and all similar
projects - Guix adopts a "BYOT" (bring your own tool) organizational
policy... and the first contributors brought theirs. :-D

For sure vim/neovim - and other tools - can also be extended and *used*
to provide /user interface/s for various external tools (e.g. see
fugitive.vim/nvim-fugitive) that are useful when using and/or developing
Guix, everyone is free to use and extend them, and also to share with
the whole Guix community how their beloved BYOT are working well.

Please see a recent message of mine (id:87pm2e4flj.fsf@xelera.eu [2])
for some of my comments (nothing really new, I just reused concept
already expressed by others) about the process needed to integrate
useful informations (configuration _is_ information) in Guix
official _recommandations_.

Happy hacking! Gio'

[2] https://yhetil.org/guix/87pm2e4flj.fsf@xelera.eu/

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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