> From: Tim Cross <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 14 May 2020 17:38:15 +1000
> Cc: address@hidden,
> Andreas Röhler <address@hidden>,
> Richard Stallman <address@hidden>, Emacs developers <address@hidden>
>
> To an extent, the editing aspects of Emacs are not particularly
> interesting and most of the really great editing features of Emacs
> have been incorporated into other editors anyway
I would disagree, at least to some extent. It is true that many Emacs
features are available today elsewhere, but some surprisingly still
aren't. For example, what about transposing words or lines with one
or 2 keystrokes?
I'm sure we will find some examples, though the ones you cited are available in a number of editors (for example VS Code C-t = letter, Shift-Ctl-t = word and Alt-Ctl-T for line transposing Many editors have been inspired by and have borrowed/copied from Emacs. Features which use to be only seen in Emacs are now seen in many other editors (column editing, rectangle cut and paste, transposing letters, words and lines, multiple cursors, etc. Most editors have some form of plugin or extention mechanism and people have ported most of the useful features from Emacs. (though their extension/plugin mechanism is typically much less flexible than Emacs).
There are certainly some things Emacs still does better with respect to editing, like editing of binary data or even ascii art etc. It is rare when I've used another editor and missed a feature that I've not found the feature is available - I may need to add a plugin or define a key binding or define a macro (as in keyboard macros not lisp macro). However, in general, I find these things which Emacs still does better to be really fringe areas which I rarely use or need. The majority of advanced editing features provided by emacs are available in most editors with a programming orientation. In many of these editors, other things which are slightly difficult to get working consistently in Emacs are available 'out of the box'. For example, getting font ligatures and colour emojii working in VS Code is trivial. In Emacs, it is harder and varies depending on which platform you are on.
VS Code is probably a good example. While I still prefer Emacs, if I'm really honest, from a purely editing perspective, VS Code is as good and feature rich. Where it fails is in the ease of extensibility and ability to customize to fit how I like to work - with VS Code, I need to adjust more to how VS Code wants to work, but when it comes to just writing source code, they are both pretty equivalent.