Emacs is one of the most ported non-trivial computer programs in the world. The Emacs help system is useful not only for beginners, but also for advanced users writing Emacs Lisp code. Platforms. I'm the favourite of artists and hipsters, and I could never settle for a boring lager like Windows. “EMACS as such actually started out as a standards project,” emails Guy Steele, one of the originators of EMACS, along with Richard Stallman, who later founded the Free Software Foundation. If emacs is such a great and powerful text editor why relatively few people use it? "At last we have solved the init controversy." It has a file manager, a client for your version control system, a web browser, a tetris game, a psychoanalyst, and countless other things. I think that's a completely fair question. -- I was reminded of this quote. Emacs is a very old software and were written before almost all the operating systems that we use today. To quote Strong Bad, this is impressive, disturbing, and makes me uncomfortable! Here's a tongue-in-cheek joke: Emacs is an operating system that is in need of a good editor. Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. META-! Pro. GNU hasn’t quite become an operating system but it does supply most of the standard Unix tools and Emacs works beautifully with them — even on (Cyg-)Windows. Has been widely used for a long time. As an old joke goes, "Emacs is an excellent operating system. It runs on a wide variety of operating systems, including most Unix-like systems (GNU/Linux, the various BSDs, Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Mac OS X, etc. The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984. ubermonkey 4 months ago. More details.. Emacs can do numerous things that Vim cannot do well, but there's nothing Vim can do that Emacs cannot. ), MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and OpenVMS. This goes in the direction of probably the most popular joke used by Vim zealots in the editor war: "Emacs is a nice operating system, but lacks a good editor", or something such. Variation: Emacs is a nice operating system, but what it lacks, in order to compete with Linux, is a good text editor. Due to that Emacs has been the subject of several jokes: “Emacs is a nice operating system, that just happens to know how to edit files.” “Emacs is a nice operating system, but what it lacks, in order to compete with Linux, is a good text editor.” (Albeit some people may argue that some of its vi-emulation modes may qualify.) There’s a joke enjoyed by both Emacs users and haters calling Emacs as the Emacs operating system for it’s fully featured extension language emacs lisp. Pro. Posted on January 23, 2015 by jcs. Pro. As old joke you probably heard says: “Emacs is a great operating system lacking only decent text editor.” Think about it this way. When we joke that Emacs is an OS, what we really mean is that it can replace many or most of the user-mode system utilities. Types of Emacs. Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style . The first says "I'm Windows. T... read more. Pro. GNU Emacs acronym expansions; Emacs is an acronym for Escape Meta Alt Control Shift. You can create directories, copy/move/delete files, you can rename files, etc. executes a single shell command, for example. Well, Emacs can’t really be an operating system because it doesn’t implement things like file systems, device drivers, and a TCP/IP stack. The second says "I'm Mac OS. Emacs is ranked 8th while Notepad++ is ranked 11th. Because of its complexity, extensibility and because of the fact that Emacs obviously does not follow the Unix philosophy (do one thing and do it well*), people tend say it's more like a good OS. I'll have a pint of lager." Unlike most modern text editors, TECO used separate modes in which the user would either add text, edit existing text, or display the document. Many jokes have been made about the true nature of Emacs, such as it being a fully-fledged operating system. Give me your hoppiest artisanal IPA!" The ongoing joke about EMACS is that it is an operating system with a text editor attached. The Emacs Operating System. It is a default shell on many operating systems including Linux and Apple MacOS X. On the other hand, Emacs can be transformed into something that actually resembles a full-blown IDE (and much more - there's truth in the "Emacs Operating System" joke). Emacs is a bloated text editor. I normally use Vim because, after extensive training, it feels easier. Unix systems, both free and proprietary, frequently provide Emacs bundled with the operating system. I never understood what people mean by the joke "emacs is a great operating system, all it needs is a decent text editor" but after reading your post I'm starting to. Has been widely used for a long time. You can use it to play tetris, browse the web, and compose email. Other joke acronyms describe the user interface: Escape Meta Alt Control Shift. That’s an old joke, of course, as is the notion that Emacs is an operating system but both the tweet and the video make a good point. This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). 3 operating systems walk into a bar. If the documentation for a function or variable is not enough, the help system can be used to browse the Emacs Lisp source code for both built-in libraries and installed third-party libraries. Ask a Microsoft Windows user. In 1984, Richard Stallman founded the `GNU project`_ to produce freely redistributable open source software under the GPL license. It’s much more complicated than Vim is. "Well I guess while you're writing this you aren't creating atomic robots to take over the earth." To understand that, you need to understand why Emacs was created and when was written its first release. It can also be a very effective text editor and programming environment. Hence the joke "Emacs makes a decent shell, but it could use a better editor.") It's a joke. Using Emacs is in many ways like using any text editor you are used to (such as Notepad on Windows), but with many unusual keyboard shortcuts. Shell scripts are a fundamental part of the Unix programming environment. Most people either love Emacs or hate its guts. Pro. The first part was about why I think that nowadays Emacs is ready to be switching to. It is perilously close to an operating system - in stark contrast to the usual unix philosophy of small tools to do single jobs well. GNU Emacs . It's a Lisp environment where anything and everything can me modified while the system is running. LWN.net re-visits the emacs-devel mailing list, where the Emacs 28 development cycle has revived discussions about how to make the text editor more "modern" and attractive to new users: A default dark theme may not be in the future, leading one to think that there may yet be hope for the world in general. ... turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system. Emacs is primarily used by programmers. It is therefore very convenient to program in Emacs Lisp using Emacs itself. Vim is pretty good for tasks that do not require a large and complicated setup. One of the best features of Emacs is the immense built-in help. Some people joke that Emacs is a good operating system. Emacs server architecture allows multiple clients to attach to the same Emacs instance and share the buffer list, kill ring, undo history and other state. Aaahh!, I see the cunning plan. (Technically it does not qualify because a OS implies management of hardware.). Pervasive online help system with keybindings, functions and commands documented on the fly. Emacs development began during the 1970s at the MIT AI Lab, whose PDP-6 and PDP-10 computers used the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) operating system that featured a default line editor known as Tape Editor and Corrector (TECO). dired-mode: dired-mode allows you to manipulate directories and files on your file system from within Emacs. Emacs is an acronym for "Editor for Middle-Aged Computer Scientists". She'll be more than happy to use Microsoft Word. Emacs is framework given to you so you can build your own editor or anything you want in it. Emacs is a extremely powerful and flexible text editor which can bend to almost everything a programmer might need. This section will illustrate the basic skills that one needs to use Emacs and more importantly, to learn how to use Emacs. That is, it looks the same and (pretty much) runs the same no matter what the actual host operating system is. This talk will demonstrate its suitability for playing retro games, then explore the inner workings of a CHIP-8 emulator capable of smooth video game emulation. Bash (Bourne-Again SHell) is a Linux and Unix-like system shell or command language interpreter. When comparing Emacs vs Neovim, ... turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system. The secret is that the people who say that Emacs is more an operating system than a text editor are right. Pro. The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984. Emacs is an acronym for Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. All it's missing is a decent text editor." Going back to the joke "Emacs is a great operating system: it just lacks a good editor", it turns out that the part about Emacs being a great operating system is also true! A while ago I've blogged about my switch from Vim to Emacs, promising a blog post series, quite a mouthful nevertheless, it's time to continue the series. "Emacs would make a great operating system, if only it had a text editor worth a shit." Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. Some calls emacs as a Operating System as a joke. Emacs Lisp, C: Operating system: Unix-like (GNU, Linux, macOS, BSDs, Solaris), Windows, MS-DOS: Platform: Cross-platform: Available in: English: Type: Text editor: License: GPLv3+ Website: www.gnu.org /software /emacs / GNU Emacs (short for Editing Macros) is a text editor that is common on many UNIX-based operating systems. Cross-platform. One way to look at Emacs is as a universal Operating System. The most popular, everyone likes me and I don't mess about. It is a common joke, both among fans and detractors of Emacs, to describe it as an operating system masquerading as an editor [3]. 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