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Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

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Re: Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

#51

Post by xte »

agumonkey wrote: post #49
xte wrote: post #24

IMO any "old enough" and complex enough software suffer some kind of "age&complexity" problems... No matter how you design it, unix choose simplicity and we see that today no real unix exists anymore (yes, they do exists per name, but in fact they do not follow unix principles), ITS, Emacs, LispM, Alto, ... choose integration and completeness and except Emacs they are essentially dead... Modern software try to choose…

if you read emacs/lisp mailing list, people were already crying about the vast difference in capabilities, ergonomics, ease of use.. saying that emacs was really really below what lisp machines editor would offer. Not even talking about the near fully reflective OS. Can't find the newsgroup url yet. But still it seems that we are far from peak even 30 years after these systems died. There's a smalltalk/pharo mooc onl…

I've read in the past Unix Hater's handbook, but I'm to young to have ever used LispM... I only see very few demos and feel Emacs like a poor's man remnant of them. I do not really know how much we lost.

However, for a rare circumstance my first computer was a decommissioned SGI O₂ donated by family friend so I have the privilege of having use SGI CDE as my first desktop environment and growing up I see how much we lost, even in PC case vs what I call "normal" well designed case with easy access and proper components and cables pass layout...

Re: Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

#52

Post by agumonkey »

xte wrote: post #51
agumonkey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you read emacs/lisp mailing list, people were already crying about the vast difference in capabilities, ergonomics, ease of use.. saying that emacs was really really below what lisp machines editor would offer. Not even talking about the near fully reflective OS. Can't find the newsgroup url yet. But still it seems that we are far from peak even 30 years after these systems died. There's a smalltalk/pharo mooc onl…

I've read in the past Unix Hater's handbook, but I'm to young to have ever used LispM... I only see very few demos and feel Emacs like a poor's man remnant of them. I do not really know how much we lost. However, for a rare circumstance my first computer was a decommissioned SGI O₂ donated by family friend so I have the privilege of having use SGI CDE as my first desktop environment and growing up I see how much we l…

I never used LispM either, and the newsgroup I mentioned had messages from people that weren't even lispers but got their hands on one lisp machine and they had to admit there was something.

That's the way of the world, things wave off, we follow along, unix won, wintel won, but that doesn't mean they were absolutely better, nor that we can't bring other good stuff from the past. We just have to keep an open mind.

Re: Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

#56

Post by anthk »

xte wrote: post #24

IMO any "old enough" and complex enough software suffer some kind of "age&complexity" problems... No matter how you design it, unix choose simplicity and we see that today no real unix exists anymore (yes, they do exists per name, but in fact they do not follow unix principles), ITS, Emacs, LispM, Alto, ... choose integration and completeness and except Emacs they are essentially dead... Modern software try to choose…

>code mess mix of mbsync+notmuch+afew+homegrown crappy scripts

Alpine and MUTT support IMAP just fine. Even s-nail supports it.

Re: Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

#57

Post by anthk »

xte wrote: post #51
agumonkey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you read emacs/lisp mailing list, people were already crying about the vast difference in capabilities, ergonomics, ease of use.. saying that emacs was really really below what lisp machines editor would offer. Not even talking about the near fully reflective OS. Can't find the newsgroup url yet. But still it seems that we are far from peak even 30 years after these systems died. There's a smalltalk/pharo mooc onl…

I've read in the past Unix Hater's handbook, but I'm to young to have ever used LispM... I only see very few demos and feel Emacs like a poor's man remnant of them. I do not really know how much we lost. However, for a rare circumstance my first computer was a decommissioned SGI O₂ donated by family friend so I have the privilege of having use SGI CDE as my first desktop environment and growing up I see how much we l…

> I have the privilege of having use SGI CDE as my first desktop environment and growing up I see how much we lost,

Not much. IceWM was already ahead of MWM, and Synaptic was almost a clone of the SGI graphical package manager. I mean, DFM and IceWM were good enough. No vector icons, but the usability was many times better than you think. CDE was overrated. MS inverted LOADS of money in order to generate an easy interface. The W95 one is basically a clean TWM iconbar one. And no one realized that that setup was many times better than Windows 3.1 . A shame.

Re: Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

#58

Post by bitwize »

xte wrote: post #50
bitwize wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have issues with touch keyboards in general. Understandable. Smartphone UIs are in general fucking terrible compared to the keyboard+mouse interfaces, which is why most people still use PCs to do real work. I've found that using Hacker's Keyboard conforms my muscle memory and lets me use a touch keyboard faster than I would otherwise be able to. It seems not everybody benefits from this.

Well... Hacker's Keyboard do make Termux usable , other keyboard completely fail, so I like it, I prize it but... It's like to say "jump from a mountain naked is really bad, jump with two open umbrellas, dressed with some kind of life-support inflated jacket and trying to fall in a lake instead on rocks is better"... When you say "most people still use PCs" like PCs was an obsolete thing makes me shiver. For me deskt…

I agree with you. I don't think PCs are obsolete. It just takes more time for the rest of the world to figure out that the much-touted death of the PC isn't happening.

Re: Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

#59

Post by anthk »

snazz wrote: post #43
anthk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough Emacspeak for the blind totally owns any new GUI technology. They can do everything from inside: IM, web, news, coding, playing music, reading ebooks, MUD's, check the mainstream news... https://tvraman.github.io/emacspeak/applications.html Your reality and bullshit applications such as Electron based bloatwares are a bad joke against disabled people.

They are also a bad joke against those of us who have underpowered or older machines. I love my 2006 MacBook (with OpenBSD) and I sure won't be running Electron on there even if it supported the OS. Emacs is wonderfully fast.

Also, I am an nvi/ed user, and I'd recommend yasr(1) for the blind, but, man, disabled people having a highly integrated textual env with sound icons, I can't just do nothing but to applaud them for the efforts.

Re: Buttery smooth Emacs (2016)

#60

Post by xte »

anthk wrote: post #57
xte wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read in the past Unix Hater's handbook, but I'm to young to have ever used LispM... I only see very few demos and feel Emacs like a poor's man remnant of them. I do not really know how much we lost. However, for a rare circumstance my first computer was a decommissioned SGI O₂ donated by family friend so I have the privilege of having use SGI CDE as my first desktop environment and growing up I see how much we l…

> I have the privilege of having use SGI CDE as my first desktop environment and growing up I see how much we lost, Not much. IceWM was already ahead of MWM, and Synaptic was almost a clone of the SGI graphical package manager. I mean, DFM and IceWM were good enough. No vector icons, but the usability was many times better than you think. CDE was overrated. MS inverted LOADS of money in order to generate an easy inte…

At that time I was a young curious teenager, I discover "computers" later due to my parents choices, what I can really tell is that when I start to suffer the fact that my shiny, noisy, big workstation can't play enough game (after years of "use") and I finally obtain my first PC with the newly exited Windows XP well... It was a traumatic change... In few months I decide to try FreeBSD to have a "modern usable OS" and it was another shock. After I tried with the help of a high school teacher Red Hat 9, I do not really like it so much but start to be an usable replacement for Irix for my needs and desire... After Debian potatoes, Sarge, Gentoo, back again to FreeBSD when 2.6 linux start to came to life, after SUN with Solaris 9 etc...

Well I still feel the miss of Irix TODAY even if I never really know it nor really used it. When I first arrive to Solaris (CDE) I feel the same stability and power sensation that I was feeling on Irix and I lost this sensation with OpenSolaris. I still miss it. really.

Even now with EXWM and NixOS as bootloader I still miss "a damn usable OS"...

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