That's interesting, but one of the challenges is the wide variety of modifier keys emacs uses, and the difficulty of binding them all in the browser.
The other major challenge is just duplicating javascript the sheer quantity of functionality emacs provides. An easier first step may be to run emacs on the server and write a javascript-based client for it.
Or, you know, run emacs on the server and write a "ssh based client" for it. :)
What would be the value of running in a browser specifically? The files you are editting almost by definition live outside the browser's sandbox. And if they're going to be managed server-side, it seems like there's a perfectly working 40 year old paradigm for managing files on a remote host.
You're right, it's an interesting challenge but not necessarily one that is begging to be solved.
Re:Emacs for the rest of us: ErgoEmacs
by intranation on Friday December 23, 2011 @03:14PM
(#3387068)
Not sure about having an editor in a browser, but if you want a (mostly) decent IRC client in the browser you could try:
I have 3 invites if anyone wants to email me (my email is on my profile).
This might not be everything you want, but check out Ymacs: http://www.ymacs.org/
The goal would be to have this app open 24h/24 on a server and be able to totally use it from the browser and customize it with Javascript.
I would also be able to have a irc client (Think erc) directly in this 'editor' coded entirely in Javascript using this API. Basically, anything you could do with emacs would be possible, but directly from the browser hosted somewhere and running 24h/24.