GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[excalamus]

May 11, 2020, 23:12 by address@hidden:

Perhaps there is no longer a need to inform the public of those

three basic capabilities of Emacs.

Do Emacs's current competitors have the same capabilities?

> You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced,

> self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs. 

What are we competing for?  I feel that while other threads are examining "missing features", it would be helpful to examine what GNU Emacs does offer.  Not only in software features, but maybe also in philosophy, community, or tradition.

What is it about GNU Emacs that makes this mailing list bustle with enthusiasm?  Other editors use GPL, provide source code, have documentation, are customizable, and extendable.  There's something in how GNU Emacs implements these that is different.  I feel like there are taters to find if we dig a little.

Is it because Emacs Lisp is unique to Emacs that Emacs teaches as well as documents?

Is it that by being a pseudo-Lisp machine, Emacs puts users in the zone of proximal development?

Is GNU Emacs the best embodiment of the GNU philosophy?