Re:Making Emacs Popular Again
by slightwinder on Friday May 08, 2020 @08:50AM
(#23114252)
> Emacs absolutely has a GUI. It happens to be drawn almost entirely from characters,
That's a TUI, not a GUI. GUI means Graphic, not text, even if it's spatial.
> And with third-party plugins, it has all the sophisticated GUI controls you could dream of
No, it has not. I've tried enough of them to know how poor they work.
You're confusing GUI with Windows GUI API. That's like complaining that a game like Stellaris barely has any GUI, because if you force it to run in windowed mode, then maybe you'll get a context menu dropping down from the application icon in the top left corner of the window.
Emacs absolutely has a GUI. It happens to be drawn almost entirely from characters, but it's a GUI. It uses the language, can display pixel graphics (in GUI-app mode), and even supports pointer devices. The fact that 99% of that GUI is a TUI is actually a benefit (you can also use it from terminal). And with third-party plugins, it has all the sophisticated GUI controls you could dream of, except unlike in traditional GUIs, they're fully interoperable.
A good comparison may be that Emacs is the OS that ships with a tiling WM, and most people unaware of that just use it to tile notepad windows.