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The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

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Re: The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

#21
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

REmacs is a very interesting development... https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs/blob/master/README.md

It'd be amazing if it crystallizes in a few years. Improving the old parts of Emacs, especially GUI code and low level things is a must. Rust seems like an ideal replacement for C. Great performance, much better safety guarantees. Equally important is perhaps improving elisp concurrency. The jury is still out on whether this will happen by migrating to Guile Scheme [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4zt…

[deleted]

Re: The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

#22
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

REmacs is a very interesting development... https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs/blob/master/README.md

It'd be amazing if it crystallizes in a few years. Improving the old parts of Emacs, especially GUI code and low level things is a must. Rust seems like an ideal replacement for C. Great performance, much better safety guarantees. Equally important is perhaps improving elisp concurrency. The jury is still out on whether this will happen by migrating to Guile Scheme [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4zt…

I believe Rust is too young a language to replace C in Emacs. I'd be happier if it was a standardised, time-tested language with a large user base and lots of docs.

Re: The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

#23
post #7

Fun blast from the past. The original version of this shipped with Mark of the Unicorn's Mince/Scribble package for CP/M. (Mince = Mince Is Not Complete Emacs)

Glad to see someone remembers that! (I was a cofounder.) The sources for the original version of Mince were lost long ago. It's too bad; they were very clear (thanks to the skills of Jason Linhart, the primary author, as well as Craig) and would have made a great example for study.

I used MINCE quite a bit, and it was great. MINCE was what you used for Emacs if you couldn't get to an ITS machine :-)

Thanks, it was a really nice editor.

Re: The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

#27
post #25
post #24

I never understood why these webpages can't have like, 4 lines of CSS to make them much more readable. Preserve the older aesthetic I guess?

What 4 lines would those be?

Inspired by https://bestmotherfucking.website/

  body {
      margin: 1em auto;
      max-width: 40em;
      font: 1.2em/1.62em sans-serif;
  }
That seems like a good start

Re: The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

#28
post #24

I never understood why these webpages can't have like, 4 lines of CSS to make them much more readable. Preserve the older aesthetic I guess?

Looks great on my phone. Symantic HTML is responsive by default.

It's a bit awkward to read on large screens. Long lines and whatnot

Re: The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

#29
post #24

I never understood why these webpages can't have like, 4 lines of CSS to make them much more readable. Preserve the older aesthetic I guess?

Maybe because the author's expertise is something other than writing HTML, so he picked up an old book on HTML, marked it up, and that's it. That the browser can render HTML written 20 years ago is quite a virtue. If it only takes 4 lines of CSS to make it more readable, then the page's lack of readability is more an indictment of the browser (which could do this tidying itself) rather than of the author, who should not have to continually update HTML so it renders well on recently-invented devices.

Re: The Craft of Text Editing (1999)

#30
post #22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be amazing if it crystallizes in a few years. Improving the old parts of Emacs, especially GUI code and low level things is a must. Rust seems like an ideal replacement for C. Great performance, much better safety guarantees. Equally important is perhaps improving elisp concurrency. The jury is still out on whether this will happen by migrating to Guile Scheme [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/4zt…

I believe Rust is too young a language to replace C in Emacs. I'd be happier if it was a standardised, time-tested language with a large user base and lots of docs.

Rust is standardized with lots of docs. The rest two will come with time.
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