Emacs 25.1 released • Hacker News Board

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#21

Post by microcolonel » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #16

Having been using emacs on and off, both on Windows and Linux, and having found it being useful on some occasions, I somehow can't help thinking of it as more of a historical artifact than a toolset I would want to use on a daily basis. Being a very powerful personal computing environment and kinda fun to use, to me emacs still falls short in the ways that, for instance, UNIX command line interface with its simple si…

At risk of coming off as flippant or mean, I think you completely missed the point. It is a productive and stable editor environment which runs in various ways across all major computer platforms. It has a veritable mountain of established extension code, modes for performing tasks outside of software development, and portable configuration. The keybindings are considerably more consistent than the alternatives, and if you don't remember them you can always use the in-built searchable help system, or try to tab complete it in the M-x prompt.

These things are not 'historical', they are the things which have been so permanent that after thirty years they are still useful.

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#22

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #16

Having been using emacs on and off, both on Windows and Linux, and having found it being useful on some occasions, I somehow can't help thinking of it as more of a historical artifact than a toolset I would want to use on a daily basis. Being a very powerful personal computing environment and kinda fun to use, to me emacs still falls short in the ways that, for instance, UNIX command line interface with its simple si…

Command line lacks reflectivity and extensibility [1] that emacs can provide.

That said I've seen some people being more efficient in command line than I've ever been even with the most effective emacs extensions so ..

ps[1]: also higher level and consistency, I like to live in atoms, integers and lists and not regexp and file land

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#23

Post by BeetleB » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #16

Having been using emacs on and off, both on Windows and Linux, and having found it being useful on some occasions, I somehow can't help thinking of it as more of a historical artifact than a toolset I would want to use on a daily basis. Being a very powerful personal computing environment and kinda fun to use, to me emacs still falls short in the ways that, for instance, UNIX command line interface with its simple si…

>Being a very powerful personal computing environment and kinda fun to use, to me emacs still falls short in the ways that, for instance, UNIX command line interface with its simple single-purpose utilities never did.

Amusingly, I'm the opposite. Emacs to me is more consistent than the UNIX command line interface, and I feel Emacs satisfies the Unix philosophy better than the command line itself does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

When people write "applications" on top of Emacs, they frequently come with APIs that let people utilize individual features. Part of the reason org-mode is so successful is its ability to leverage features from many other applications built on top of Emacs (mail, links, calendar, image viewing, etc).

Except for the few core Unix tools, most console applications in Unix do not provide as much flexibility through the command line interface. Nor do they come with APIs that let others build upon them.

To someone not well versed with Emacs, what I'm saying may sound crazy, as for many people, the extent Unix tools do provide these switches/APIs is very satisfactory. But it's not even close compared to Emacs.

This is why when I started my job and we work purely on Windows machines, I had no problem. I installed Emacs for Windows, and had access to much that I used to in Linux.

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#24

Post by dleslie » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

Emacs being able to load shared/dynamic libraries is huge; it means we'll be able to load so files from a user's home directory, or the standard lib paths, and use foreign functions to extend Emacs. And with XWidgets...

Well, now you could write an OpenGL game that uses an OpenAL audio layer and displays in an Emacs frame, all in elisp. Because, why not?

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#25

Post by SEMW » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

syastrov wrote: post #14

Congrats on the release. But I'm wondering, why not provide the PGP signatures for the code over HTTPS instead of HTTP?

Does it matter? If your connection gets MITM'd and someone changes the .sig files, they'll no longer validate against GNU's code-signing public key (which you may already have, or if not, the link to download it is https (https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg). (Unless of course that person has GNU's private key, but in that case you've lost before you started)

(Incidentally, if you just change the url from http to https (or use the EFF's https-everywhere addon) it works fine, the server does support it)

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#26

Post by avar » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

For the uninitiated: Emacs major releases start at X.1, not X.0. So this is the first 25.X release, not some minor version release.

The last major version, 24.1, was released in June 2012, so this represents over 4 years of development.

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#27

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #16

Having been using emacs on and off, both on Windows and Linux, and having found it being useful on some occasions, I somehow can't help thinking of it as more of a historical artifact than a toolset I would want to use on a daily basis. Being a very powerful personal computing environment and kinda fun to use, to me emacs still falls short in the ways that, for instance, UNIX command line interface with its simple si…

...I think you're forgetting something about Emacs: It's not just an environment (I for one don't browse my mail in Emacs: I can't get the emacs mail clients to work), it's also a text editor with unbeatable extensibility. To this day, there is not a text editor I know of that is both as extensible, and has had that feature utilized as throughly. In many editors, extensibility is actually an afterthought (cough cough vim cough cough). There is integration with almost every language and tool that exists, and a few that don't anymore.

That is what makes it an amazing programming environment.

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#28

Post by pvdebbe » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

aban wrote: post #2

Great news and congrats to everyone involved! Among the highlights of this release is Xwidgets, which allows embedding GTK+ widgets inside Emacs buffers. One such widget is WebKitGTK+, a full-featured port of WebKit for use in GTK+ apps. As a consequence of this you can now browse the internet and maybe watch some YouTube inside Emacs [0]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4srze9/watching_yout...

I wonder if those widgets require GTK support in Emacs. I compile a plain X support for my emacs only, because with GTK it doesn't stay up for months without crashing. I had an emacs server with 180 day uptime the other day. Maybe on my work machine that is Windows anyway, I can try this out. :>

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#29

Post by pvdebbe » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

kfrz wrote: post #3

aban wrote: post #2

Great news and congrats to everyone involved! Among the highlights of this release is Xwidgets, which allows embedding GTK+ widgets inside Emacs buffers. One such widget is WebKitGTK+, a full-featured port of WebKit for use in GTK+ apps. As a consequence of this you can now browse the internet and maybe watch some YouTube inside Emacs [0]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4srze9/watching_yout...

Only yesterday I discovered I could play an adventure game in emacs. Then I discovered a bunch of layers and modes that were awesome. I haven't begun to scratch the surface, but if I buy a new Nexus 6P can I just flash Emacs on it?

Have you asked your M-x doctor about it yet? ;)

Re: Emacs 25.1 released

#30

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

kfrz wrote: post #3

aban wrote: post #2

Great news and congrats to everyone involved! Among the highlights of this release is Xwidgets, which allows embedding GTK+ widgets inside Emacs buffers. One such widget is WebKitGTK+, a full-featured port of WebKit for use in GTK+ apps. As a consequence of this you can now browse the internet and maybe watch some YouTube inside Emacs [0]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4srze9/watching_yout...

Only yesterday I discovered I could play an adventure game in emacs. Then I discovered a bunch of layers and modes that were awesome. I haven't begun to scratch the surface, but if I buy a new Nexus 6P can I just flash Emacs on it?

[deleted]