Community

I've been searching around the forum for a while, and i don't think this has been asked before. (if it has, i'm sorry)

I'm kind a' interested to learn what emacs can do that textpad can't. I've heard a lotta people banging on about what good editor emacs is, so i would like to know what excatly is so good about it, and why so many people has formed a religion around it. ...and textpad is my only frame of reference. (also to know what features i should miss in textpad - i allmost can't think of any)

(i know emacs UI pretty much sux, so don't tell me that textpad is superiour/moreStandartized in that aspect. Just wanna know which features that are in emacs that ain't in textpad or only are partly in textpad, not about emacs' ease of use)

So what can EMACS do that TextPad can't?

EMACS can open your refrigerator, open a can of your favorite tasty beverage, pour it for you and deliver it to your current location.

As for a useful comments, I have none. vi (actually VIM) would be my next editor of choice.

Having said that, it is my understanding that emacs allows for the building of scriptable actions. It has a built-in interpreter for LISP, highly extensible, open source to make it really-really extensible, and a large, if insane, userbase.

Ok, you say these are the advantages of EMACS:

- (being able to do metaphysic stuff)
- scripts (is this something like macros?)
- LISP
- highly extendable

How is it highly entendable? Through plugins? (maybe a little like winamp?)
What can these plugins (or whatever) do? (are they normal programs launched by emacs? If so, how can they take control of emacs? I mean, can they change everything in emacs, or only what emacs allows them to (=things that emacs has predefined that plugins can change)?)

LISP? Know nothing about it yet... Googled a little around, and it seems to be a programming language, that can do everything other programming languages (like f.e. C) can do.. So is it by using LISP one can 'highly extend' emacs, or is it used for something else?

As you hear - i got no clue yet..

Sorry, but this is not a forum for emacs, so I have closed this thread. I suggest you use the comp.emacs newsgroup.

Keith MacDonald
Helios Software Solutions