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Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

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21–30 of 340 posts

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#21

The core should be in rust, verfied in lean, and the runtime should be in guile. Literate programming in org-mode should be a hard requirement. Package management should require patch algebra. Macros should be submitted to a leaderboard in a blockchain and yield flair in EUDC. M-x measure-beard-length should require 10000 hours of logged usage and unlock the major mode infinity-categorization. Tongue-no-longer-in-che…

>beard length is gendered

you insensitive clod

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/02/14

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#23
post #19

Support 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 key…

> If text in Emacs looked as pretty as text on the web does Do you have an example of this? I can't tell any difference for the fonts that I use (with emacs-pgtk). I believe Emacs uses Harfbuzz (same as Chrom{e|ium}).

I have never figured out how to get a good font and rendering going for text in Urdu/arabic script.

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#24
I would change the development platform. Doing everything by mail makes things more difficult for people that are not used to the older mail+patch workflow. Having something like GitLab or sourcehut would be nice, as it would also bring a more modern bug tracker.

Personally I find following email conversations much harder than just a single conversation thread like in a GitHub issue, for example.

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#25

I would change the development platform. Doing everything by mail makes things more difficult for people that are not used to the older mail+patch workflow. Having something like GitLab or sourcehut would be nice, as it would also bring a more modern bug tracker. Personally I find following email conversations much harder than just a single conversation thread like in a GitHub issue, for example.

All sensible email clients have a 'thread view' for just this purpose, which effectively makes it a 'single conversation thread'.

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#26
post #6

Instead 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/ >.

emacs is not its keybindings. you can bind your emacs keyboard to do what you are asking for; as you said, you wrote a mode for emacs that works the way you want, and it wasn't necessary to rewrite Emacs.

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#27
post #12
post #6

Instead 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/ >.

Make CapsLock an additional Ctrl. On many old keyboards that is where the Ctrl key was positioned [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caps_Lock#Placement

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#29
post #19

Support 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 key…

> If text in Emacs looked as pretty as text on the web does Do you have an example of this? I can't tell any difference for the fonts that I use (with emacs-pgtk). I believe Emacs uses Harfbuzz (same as Chrom{e|ium}).

Huh. I use pgtk Emacs, too, and am surprised to find someone who doesn't find my statement obvious.

Re: Ask HN: If you were rewriting Emacs from scratch, what would you do differently?

#30
post #12
post #6

Instead 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/ >.

Make CapsLock an additional Ctrl. On many old keyboards that is where the Ctrl key was positioned [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caps_Lock#Placement

I know many people like to remap Caps Lock to function as Ctrl. However that setup does not quite work for me. There is only one Caps Lock key on the left side of the keyboard. I need Ctrl on both sides of the keyboard, so that I can use the left Ctrl key while typing Ctrl+P but the right one while typing Ctrl+A.

There are other options as well, like remapping the Enter key to act as Ctrl when chorded or using sticky modifiers. I think using an ergonomic keyboard with two large Ctrl keys on both sides of the keyboard is probably the best solution. I've discussed some of these alternatives in more detail https://susam.github.io/devil/#why>.

By the way, there are some vendors that still make Unix layout keyboards with the Ctrl key positioned where Caps Lock key usually is: https://deskthority.net/wiki/Category:Keyboards_with_Unix_la...>.

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