<story><title>Emacs in odd places</title><url>https://www.eigenbahn.com/2020/09/02/emacs-in-odd-places</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>olivierestsage</author><text>When I started using Emacs, I didn&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;d use it much except for org-mode, which was the reason I started learning it. Then, as my usage expanded, I didn&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;d want to use it for anything beyond org-mode, programming, and core text editing functions. Certainly not email or any of that other foolishness. Flash forward a couple of years and here I am, looking into making Emacs into my actual X window manager [1] so that I finally use it for everything, period.&lt;p&gt;I recognize that the practical arguments in favor of doing this are limited at best. Sometimes people &amp;quot;Emacs evangelize&amp;quot; by talking about how living entirely within the program allows them to have one text editing paradigm for everything in their lives; even though that is indeed nice, non-users aren&amp;#x27;t wrong to be skeptical about the practical benefits, given the amount of effort that will probably be involved. The secret is that for many Emacs users, it&amp;#x27;s just plain fun -- hence the things shown in this article, and also EXWM.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;ch11ng&amp;#x2F;exwm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;ch11ng&amp;#x2F;exwm&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gumby</author><text>When I started using Unix in &amp;#x27;85 or so I didn&amp;#x27;t find it especially user friendly so the first program I wrote was a little trampoline alternative to the login shell (&amp;#x2F;bin&amp;#x2F;sh in those days) that exec&amp;#x27;d emacs as the terminal&amp;#x27;s controlling process.  At least that way I could be an a more familiar environment.&lt;p&gt;My emacs init checked argv[0] -- if the name started with &amp;#x27;-&amp;#x27; then it asked if I intended to log out before exiting.&lt;p&gt;That was on the original GNU machine -- yes, when the FSF&amp;#x27;s entire computing resource was an unused VAX 750 that nobody wanted and that had been purchased and installed by someone unknown for reasons also unknown and was just taking up space in a small machine room.</text></comment>
<story><title>Emacs in odd places</title><url>https://www.eigenbahn.com/2020/09/02/emacs-in-odd-places</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>olivierestsage</author><text>When I started using Emacs, I didn&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;d use it much except for org-mode, which was the reason I started learning it. Then, as my usage expanded, I didn&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;d want to use it for anything beyond org-mode, programming, and core text editing functions. Certainly not email or any of that other foolishness. Flash forward a couple of years and here I am, looking into making Emacs into my actual X window manager [1] so that I finally use it for everything, period.&lt;p&gt;I recognize that the practical arguments in favor of doing this are limited at best. Sometimes people &amp;quot;Emacs evangelize&amp;quot; by talking about how living entirely within the program allows them to have one text editing paradigm for everything in their lives; even though that is indeed nice, non-users aren&amp;#x27;t wrong to be skeptical about the practical benefits, given the amount of effort that will probably be involved. The secret is that for many Emacs users, it&amp;#x27;s just plain fun -- hence the things shown in this article, and also EXWM.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;ch11ng&amp;#x2F;exwm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;ch11ng&amp;#x2F;exwm&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AlanYx</author><text>IMHO using Emacs as your X window manager isn&amp;#x27;t particularly strange -- conceptually at least, it seems more natural than the Chromebook model, where people are essentially using a web browser as a window manager.</text></comment>