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Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

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Re: Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

#71

The README doesn't say much about whether and how the rewrite would differ from the main Emacs implementation in terms of threading architecture. A major problem (I think this is an uncontroversial statement) with the main Emacs implementation is that it is fairly common, in every day use, to block the main thread responsible for accepting keyboard input and repainting the screen etc. This (again, uncontroversial I t…

IMHO, as someone who absolutely loves emacs, this is the biggest problem with emacs.

Re: Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

#74
post #55
post #5

This looks like a lot of work for what amounts to very little end-user benefit. Honestly, I'd rather see more progress on the Emacs Lisp/Guile migration than on a putative C/Rust migration. At least with the Guile switch, it's something that will have an obvious (and probably positive) impact on the people that use the editor.

For big rewrites, I like to see someone who's been burned by a failed rewrite at the helm. They'll be much more aware of the pros and cons, and at far less risk of underestimating the effort involved, or the value of working code.

That's part of why I made the comment I did. 15 years ago, I was starting a small little MicroISV. Rather than focus on the product, I focused on building a Scheme interpreter I was going to use to build the product. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal that has stuck with me today. But it didn't result in a better product and it didn't result in a successful business.

(I'm not saying remacs is the same thing by any means, but the relationship between effort expended and the type of value realized is something I've become more attuned to the older I get. Maybe it's a mild mid-life crisis, but I'm pretty cognizant these days that there's an upper bound on the length of time we have available.)

Re: Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

#75
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

349,615 lines of C 1,632,280 lines of elisp

Also... I have dug the emacs sources for a while and i can testify that many times, function have two, three (sometimes more) actual implementations that gets actually built depending on configuration (example: sunos va dos vs linux vs win32 version of function foo). So... Yeah. The c lines are in a way, "overcounted".

No... those lines still have to be maintained and kept in sync, otherwise you end up with bugs. So it's not over counting, because there is still work associated with these different implementations

Re: Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

#76
post #5

This looks like a lot of work for what amounts to very little end-user benefit. Honestly, I'd rather see more progress on the Emacs Lisp/Guile migration than on a putative C/Rust migration. At least with the Guile switch, it's something that will have an obvious (and probably positive) impact on the people that use the editor.

This looks like a lot of work for what amounts to very little end-user benefit.

The sons of Hermes love to play

And only do their best when they

Are told they oughtn't;

Apollo's children never shrink

From boring jobs but have to think

Their work important.

Re: Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

#78
post #3

Not intended to be a port, but I occasionally search for an editor that is customizable in Python to the extent Emacs is. Leo Editor ( http://leoeditor.com ) fits that bill. It's been around since the 90's (and the web page looks like it's from the 90's). Even though it has many users, the documentation is quite poor. If I had another life to live, I would learn it well and improve the docs - and then port over every…

I too have done a similar search and generally failed. I found Leo too when looking for a new editor - it's great but somewhat tied to the outliner model IIRC?

Re: Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

#79
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STOP/ I just think that before judging remacs everyone had to read this blogpost: http://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2017/04/30/remacs-talk-transcr...

gotta love this line: "We aim to be a drop-in replacement with bug-for-bug compatibility."

That's the best policy when re-writing or fixing any legacy system. Shouldn't be surprising at all.

Re: Remacs – A community-driven port of Emacs to Rust

#80
post #5

This looks like a lot of work for what amounts to very little end-user benefit. Honestly, I'd rather see more progress on the Emacs Lisp/Guile migration than on a putative C/Rust migration. At least with the Guile switch, it's something that will have an obvious (and probably positive) impact on the people that use the editor.

I don't know if it's a priority but it would be cool to see rendering speed improved.

That's an odd expectation to have. I would think rendering speed would stay the same or increase a bit; a lot of hand optimizations are going disappear.
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