Re: "Why is emacs so square?"

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 20.04.2020 05:19, Richard Stallman wrote:
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>
>    > > Perhaps we could focus on adding missing features to Emacs' display
>    > > engine (such as the aformentioned fancy graphics, and also some other
>    > > important features that RMS has mentioned, such as variable-pitch
>    > > indentation).
>
>    > I'm pretty sure neither "fancy graphics" inside file buffers, nor
>    > variable-pitch indentation are the reason for VS Code's popularity.
>
> That statement may be correct, but you've changed the topic.

Did I?

> You're talking specifically about VS Code, which is a "source code
> editor".  What I had in mind, regarding variable-pitch text, was word
> processing.

The topic was Emacs's popularity, AFAICT.

It's already a good source code editor, and yet its share among 
programmers is < 5%.

As a word processor, it's a lot less capable, and adding the two 
features you mentioned above won't bring us much closer to that goal, 
compared to established options. And there are existing Free programs 
that do this better already (like LibreOffice Writer).

We certainly should enable all kinds of uses, but given the limited 
resources, I think we should play to our strengths first.