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From: msw@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Matt S Wartell)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Why does emacs do so much that is not editing?
Summary: gnu emacs does a number of non-editing tasks, what is the rationale?
Keywords: gnu emacs kitchen-sink question
Message-ID: <19115@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 89 01:13:09 GMT
Reply-To: msw@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Matt S Wartell)
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Lines: 19

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

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

Does GNU emacs do all of these `extra' tasks because it can, or is there
a compelling reason to do everything from within the editor?

Please, do not read this as a criticism of the support packages that
come with emacs, but rather as a query regarding the Buddha nature (:-) 
of emacs.
-- 
matt wartell, university of pittsburgh             msw@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu