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The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

emacsconf.org

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Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#131

Post by mark_l_watson »

whartung wrote: post #101
heinrichhartman wrote: post #3

Direct Link to "Lem" the Common Lisp based "Emacs" discussed in the talk. https://lem-project.github.io/ https://github.com/lem-project/lem

Is this based on Hemlock, or was it written from scratch? I really, really want a graphical emacs. By that I mean, I want an emacs with graphics, not an emacs in windows. I want to easily be able to draw stuff. I ran into this the other day, I like to dabble in emacs, and I had a list of results I wanted to make a quick chart. I ended up dumping it out in a simple CSV, and copy/pasting that into a spreadsheet, and hi…

When building it, choose “make sdl2” to get the graphical UI. I also build the text UI, but the sdl2 UI is more fun and is very responsive. I didn’t see any ability to draw graphs in the window.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#132

Post by mark_l_watson »

kazinator wrote: post #50
dleslie wrote: post #19

It's weird to be building an Emacs clone nowadays. It's fairly clear that Vim and Emacs _both_ lost the editor wars, and VSCode has come out on top. That's not to say either Vim or Emacs are dead or will disappear, but building a clone of a niche editor is risking dooming the project to being a niche within a niche. If it's just because hacking is fun, then by all means have a blast. But if the goal is to compete wit…

I need an editor that starts up, cache cold, in a few hundred milliseconds at most. Thanks for playing.

Well, Lem starts very fast, but more like 1 second or a little longer. It is very snappy to use also.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#133

Post by KerrAvon »

globular-toast wrote: post #86
GrumpySloth wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand wanting to restrict use of something a person created using a restrictive licence. I can’t understand being sad about someone else not restricting what they created. To me it looks like someone being sad after seeing someone else giving out free ice cream, even though the person being sad didn’t contribute to making the ice cream.

GPL is more free than MIT, not less. I would never make significant contributions to a non-GPL project.

GPL is more restricted than MIT, not less. I would never make significant contributions to a GPL project.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#134

Post by globular-toast »

GrumpySloth wrote: post #93
tmtvl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view on the GPL is that it's freedom-preserving, like how a law forbidding the enslavement of people is freedom-preserving, even though it technically restricts a freedom. That's why I look more favourably on GPL software than software with a so-called 'permissive' license.

This and similar arguments in this thread work on the same logic that frames software piracy as theft. It’s the fallacy of treating software as a tangible thing that, when copied, is taken away from someone and altered irreversibly.

That's ridiculous. The GPL explicitly allows people to make copies.

What many free software advocates actually want is a world without copyright on software. It's copyright that frames copying as stealing. In a world with copyright, the only way to counter that is copyleft. The fact GPL can also enforce inclusion of source code is a nice side effect of copyleft. But ultimately what we want is a world where software is shared, treated as knowledge and not as a product.

MIT style licences are just not good enough. That software could still end up in some copyright protected proprietary product one day and then, yes, someone could accuse me of "stealing" their property, which contains our software.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#135

Post by globular-toast »

roenxi wrote: post #120
globular-toast wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licences like MIT optimise individual freedom: they give each user the freedom to do anything including restricting the freedom of others . Licences like GPL optimise community freedom: they give each user the freedom to do anything except restricting the freedom of others . Think of it like local vs global optimisation.

Although I agree, notice that the only act the GPL compels someone to do is to hand over the source code with the program. MIT doesn't give people a freedom to restrict because that isn't a freedom. The restriction is always done by the legal system. The GPL is just an attempt to stop the legal system from interfering in the market to restrict user freedom. So both licenses are actually communicating to a 3rd party (…

That's right, the GPL and other copyleft licences in fact aim to disable copyright, this restoring us back to how things should be with no copyright.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#136

Post by globular-toast »

KerrAvon wrote: post #133
globular-toast wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL is more free than MIT, not less. I would never make significant contributions to a non-GPL project.

GPL is more restricted than MIT, not less. I would never make significant contributions to a GPL project.

Like a country with human rights is more restricted because it doesn't allow you to enslave anyone.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#137

Post by GrumpySloth »

roenxi wrote: post #126
GrumpySloth wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster I replied to complained about someone choosing MIT over GPL, not a proprietary licence over GPL. Noone is blocked from contributing for legal reasons. Quite the opposite.

Riddle me this then, why use MIT over GPL? The point of the MIT license is to make it easier to link it to proprietary software. It is setting up a situation where users will not be free. In and of itself it isn't a bad license; it just doesn't protect freedom and it can be used in ways that block people from contributing. By design. If you expect people to treat MIT licensed software as GPL licensed software, then t…

> It is setting up a situation where users will not be free.

No. It is setting up a situation where users can choose between a free option A and a proprietary option B based on A. Being sad about A being too liberal is suggesting it’s more important for you that B doesn’t exist than that A exists.

> If you expect people to treat MIT licensed software as GPL licensed software,

I don’t. Contrary to GNU and FSF websites, GPL is not a synonym for freedom. Most people, outside of GNU-centric places like this post about Emacs, prefer more liberal licences.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#138

Post by vindarel »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #130

After reading this article this morning I went down a very fun rabbit hole today: removed my SBCL installation, installed Roswell to install SBCL again, etc. The good things: editing works, slime works, access to all my Quicklisp based libraries and projects. The bad things mostly involve limited Lem functionality because I rely on many eLisp libraries like treemacs, etc. I really like the speed, and having everythin…

> treemacs

Try C-x d in Lem (Alt-x filer) https://lem-project.github.io/usage/usage/#filer---project-e...

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#139

Post by GrumpySloth »

globular-toast wrote: post #134
GrumpySloth wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and similar arguments in this thread work on the same logic that frames software piracy as theft. It’s the fallacy of treating software as a tangible thing that, when copied, is taken away from someone and altered irreversibly.

That's ridiculous. The GPL explicitly allows people to make copies. What many free software advocates actually want is a world without copyright on software. It's copyright that frames copying as stealing. In a world with copyright, the only way to counter that is copyleft. The fact GPL can also enforce inclusion of source code is a nice side effect of copyleft. But ultimately what we want is a world where software i…

> What many free software advocates actually want is a world without copyright on software.

Some of them sure. The subset of them who are GPL advocates are simply confused though. GPL is not possible in a world without copyright. In a world without copyright I can release software, which can be written from the ground up or be based on something open source, doesn’t matter, and not share the code with anyone. Just the binary. I can also create AWS based on open source software and nothing like AGPL will stop me from providing proprietary services based on it.

If you want to see an argument from someone who opposes copyright, but has more consistent views on the matter, I recommend this piece: https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_l...>

And the reason I pointed to the fallacy is that multiple people in this thread suggest that making a proprietary product based on open source software constitutes taking something away from users of this software. This is illogical. They still have the original. The only person who loses in this situation is the original author, not the users.

Re: The Emacsen family, the design of an Emacs and the importance of Lisp (2023)

#140

Post by vindarel »

logicprog wrote: post #60

I like the idea of a more modern Emacs that uses the full power of Common Lisp a lot, but I worry I'd miss a lot of features. Does Lem have org mode, a good LSP system, something like projectile, and the ability to display images and GUI buttons and such? And most importantly, does it have an evil mode with doom/spacemacs style leader key support?

to answer for readers: yes:

Lem has a LSP system,

something like projectile (M-x project-find-file, M-x project-switch etc, still inferior but nearly there and easy to extend)

images: yes (the SDL2 version). It can display games (M-x tetris, it can run a real game engine)

evil: great vim layer, no leader key. I didn't see a discussion about that, you should come and ask ;)

and no:

GUI buttons: that's not a UI choice I guess, so no

no org-mode support yet, although it has an Emacs RPC, so the idea is to use it to bring org-mode.

not asked, but good to know:

it has a wip Git mode: see status, stage files/hunks, commit, interactive rebase, basic hg and fossil support. (I added it)

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