The Modernization of Emacs

[David Kastrup]

Kaldrenon <kaldrenon at gmail.com> writes:

> I'm very, very new to emacs. I used it a little this past year in
> college, but I didn't try at all to delve into its features. I'm
> starting that process now, and frankly, the thought of it changing -
> already- upsets me. I don't feel like the program ought to change in
> order to accommodate me.

Actually, the "E" in "Emacs" stands for "extensible".  Part of the
appeal of Emacs is that you can change it to accommodate you.

> I'm excited about the prospect of mastering something new and
> different. The fewer resemblances to the common- denominator,
> extra-friendly stuff I've worked with in the past, the better.
>
> Emacs' uniqueness may hurt its adoption rate, but it still has
> plenty of users, who are all perfectly happy with how things are
> done.

Oh, but Emacs is not TeX: it _is_ being developed further.  And some
changes are done in order to synchronize Emacs with the "other world"
where the latter has been oversleeping.  For example, Emacs 23 will
internally use utf-8/Unicode as its encoding when it has used
emacs-mule up to now, a multibyte code of its own.

In spirit, this will not change Emacs much, yet it will remove
other-world friction and make Emacs more obviously the incarnation of
editing descended into this world.

-- 
David Kastrup