The Modernization of Emacs

[Joel J. Adamson]

Xah Lee <xah at xahlee.org> writes:

> ----------------------------------------
> SIMPLE CHANGES
>
> In the following, i describe some critical changes that are also very
> easy to fix in emacs. If emacs officially adopt these changes, i think
> it will make a lot people, at least programers, like emacs and choose
> emacs as their text editor.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it aims to make Emacs
appeal to people -- I think it is rather the other way around.
Certain people appeal to Emacs:  certain kinds of people like Emacs
and the way it is set up, and they change it to suit their needs.

Among your changes, I found none that made sense to me, a person who
used Unix before Windows became widely used.  For people like me, who
always preferred Unix, changes like changing "buffer" to "opened file"
seem inefficient and unnecessary.

Sorry -- this totally falls flat.  It won't make Emacs more widely
used.  The only thing that will make Emacs more widely used is making
people aware of it; as soon as I became aware of Emacs (from reading
Wikipedia, ironically), I began using it and I knew I was stuck with
it.  It's not even important for the survival of Emacs that it be more
widely used -- it was never important in the last thirty years of its
history, why should it be important now that Microsoft Word is so
widely used?

Joel

-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA  02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109