Don't get me wrong, I'm not planning on creating an Emacs killer, nor suggest anyone do that. But, hypothetically, what are some fundamental pitfalls of this foundational application?
Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
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Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#2Not using Lisp would be helpful
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#3- Use Common Lisp instead of Emacs Lisp.
- Design a more modular architecture to make it easier to extend and maintain different components.
- Design a more robust plugin system for development and distribution of extensions.
- Implement better sandboxing and security measures for extensions.
- Better APIs for extension developers.
- better multi-threading support baked into the editor.
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#4Not using Lisp would be helpful
Actually, I love Emacs for its Lisp! Yes, Emacs Lisp is not the best Lisp out there, however, IMHO, it's miles ahead of VimScript. If I were really to rewrite Emacs, I'd use some modern Scheme.
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#5Support prettier typography (if the user is not interacting with Emacs through a terminal, in which case of course the typography is up to the terminal-emulation app). If text in Emacs looked as pretty as text on the web does, it would be less of a struggle for me to stay focused on the Emacs text. (Text on the web was already much above average in pleasantness to look at and to read in the 1990s.)
Get rid of any keybinding or UI convention that is there because that is the way they did it the AI Lab in 1967. Make the UI as familiar to the average computer user as possible (but keep the general design of a large rectangle of text) by using mainstream conventions (which come mainly from the Mac and Windows) for how to respond to this or that keypress or to clicking or dragging with this or that mouse button.
Inside Emacs is a cross-platform toolkit (where the platforms are MacOS, other Unix derivatives, Windows and the terminal) I would split Emacs into 2 projects: a toolkit and an app that uses the toolkit. That way, if someone wants to create an "standalone" org-mode app, Magit app or Gemini browser designed to appeal to people who do not want to spend any time learning to use Emacs the app or "Emacs the generalized interface to information", they have a straightforward way to do so. (These "standalone" apps that are as easy to learn as any other GUI app will I hope help popularize the Emacs ecosystem.)
One thing I definitely would not change is I would not make Emacs dependent on or closely integrated with a browser engine.
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#6Instead of using ctrl and meta modifiers, use a leader key like escape or semicolon or comma or some such thing as the prefix key for key bindings. In fact, this desire for leader-key-based, non-modal text editing led me to write devil-mode for Emacs: https://susam.github.io/devil/>.
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#7Build it on top of Guile.
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#8- Use Common Lisp instead of Emacs Lisp. - Design a more modular architecture to make it easier to extend and maintain different components. - Design a more robust plugin system for development and distribution of extensions. - Implement better sandboxing and security measures for extensions. - Better APIs for extension developers. - better multi-threading support baked into the editor.
> Use Common Lisp instead of Emacs Lisp.
Interesting, why not a scheme? Is it because the popularity in the industry? I don't know much about Emacs or lisps and looking to understand better
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#9- Use Common Lisp instead of Emacs Lisp. - Design a more modular architecture to make it easier to extend and maintain different components. - Design a more robust plugin system for development and distribution of extensions. - Implement better sandboxing and security measures for extensions. - Better APIs for extension developers. - better multi-threading support baked into the editor.
For the Common Lisp part, someone created lem [0], but for the other points I can't tell. I know there is an extension manager being developped, but am not able to judge the robustness. Also that there isn't org-mode.
Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?
#10- Use Common Lisp instead of Emacs Lisp. - Design a more modular architecture to make it easier to extend and maintain different components. - Design a more robust plugin system for development and distribution of extensions. - Implement better sandboxing and security measures for extensions. - Better APIs for extension developers. - better multi-threading support baked into the editor.
> Use Common Lisp instead of Emacs Lisp. Interesting, why not a scheme? Is it because the popularity in the industry? I don't know much about Emacs or lisps and looking to understand better
Scheme is smaller, has more static and less interactive philosophy. CL has most things you need straight out of the box. It's more like operating system than programming language. Exactly what Emacs wants to be.