Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rpi!rpi.edu!rodney
From: rodney@taac.ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Why does emacs do so much that is not editing?
Message-ID: 
Date: 18 Aug 89 02:28:45 GMT
References: <19115@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu>
Sender: usenet@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Image Processing Lab, Troy NY
Lines: 20
In-reply-to: msw@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu's message of 14 Aug 89 01:13:09 GMT


MSW> I have just recently begun using GNU Emacs and am very impressed.
MSW> However, I am curious about a bit of philosophy that seems to be
MSW> behind the emacs way of thought.

MSW> In particular, emacs attempts to do everything.  In some ways, this is
MSW> nice; for example, the ability to reconfigure an editor to support
MSW> LaTeX is useful.  However, does an editor really need to know how to
MSW> read mail, post news, run an Eliza session or establish a telnet
MSW> connection?  This seems to be counter to the Unix philosophy of ``a
MSW> tool should do one job and do it well.''

In addition to the other things people have already said about emacs
being a lisp interpreter, you should also note that emacs wasn't built
around Unix originally.

That's why the Unix interface can be a bit clunky at times.

--
Rodney