Re: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > In case where there is a discret gfx card (i.e. Nvidia/AMD) it is
>   > probably faster to send everything to GPU and ask it to render a 
>   > giant texture and then use it as XWindow pixmap, or something similar
>   > then to figure out on CPU all the stuff that should not be displayed.
>
>   > But Emacs will maybe run on some slow devices (atmel Emacs anyone?), so
>   > you probably don't want to ditch away all that disp stuff.
>
> The most important targets machines for the GNU system are machines
> that don't require users to install any nonfree software.
>
> Unfortunately, Nvidia and AMD GPUs require the system to download
> nonfree firmware into them.  It follows that computers with that
> hardware can't get certified for Respects Your Freedom -- and we who
> prize freedom won't use them.
>
> The development of GNU Emacs has to give first priority to those
> computers -- not to the more powerful computers that require your
> system load to contain nonfree software.
Of course, I completely understand and agre that  Emacs should
prioritize free systems, but in case of resource avialable why not use
it? I would personally love to see Emacs do graphics, I have bothered
Eli with the issue at few occasions I think, and I do believe if Elisp
via Emacs let one do some cool visual stuff, like programming some
graphics, and doing drawing in the editor would make it more useful and
more efficient. Also I see it as a one brick in making Emacs more
popular. I personally think it would be super cool to see Emacs do 3D
with Elisp, and peopel being able to use it as Processing (the language)
or Python to script some visualisations directly in Elisp. I think that
Lisp's nature as a languages suites graphical processing quite well,
isn't a DAGs just list of lists? Creating a DOM tre or a scene graph in
Elisp should be quite natural thing to program. Now when native compiler
is on the way, the speed would be quite good as well, probably not as
hand chrafted C/C++ code, but good enough for many purposes. Enabling
graphics with Elisp (and emacs) might be a strategical move to make
Emacs more popular. By the way I start to hate that phrase "make Emacs
more popular" :-).

In this case I would rather say it would make Emacs more efficient.
People are already doing this stuff; they visualise and render stuff in
other software and then display images in Emacs. Instead of adding cost
to go via external process and file system, Emacs could support a lot of
coolness more efficiently if there was some drawing support in it.



Optional read below: :-)    _____________________________________________

I completely understand your point and am aware of it even before you
mention it, and I agree with you. I have given thought to ideology of
GNU and your philosophy, several times. Let me first say that I do agree
with that philosophy; yes I believe you are completely correct, I value
my freedom, and I believe that freedom to see and even modify the source
code is the better way to make software and business in the very end.

It is just that most of computers nowdays will have some sort of
graphic cards, even small pocket devices, and any graphical application
running on those will be linked to non-proprietary drivers. People don't
always choose what is best for them, and best technical or moral
solution does not always win, politics and money are often bigger
motivators then the common or even personal good.

It is probably less interesting why I agree, and more what I might
object: I think it is very platonic view of the world. Looking at some
2500 thousands year back, and at the human stupidity spent till today's
time, I am very pessimistic about :-). Plato's view of the world was how
world *should* be, Aristotle's view was how world *is*. Guess whom
Greeks went to when they needed a new constitution. People don't always
choose what is best for them, unfortunately. If it was so there wouldn't
be wars, hunger and powerty. I believe also that one should live as one
preach, so definitely Emacs should be free and should work best on free
system; I do use free OS myself for all my computing needs minus mobile
phone :-(.

Just as I see that freedom is a moral imperative, I also see not wasting
resources as a moral imperative. You wouldn't open a window every day
and throw a $100 into the wind, would you? Hopefully you don't buy food
and eat just half of it and throw away the other half? Why would anyone
in clear mind wish to not save energy when it is possible? I understand
that energy is *cheap* and it is not directly visible on the bill, but
software running on thousands or millions of computers, possibly many
times during the computer lifetime should be energy efficient.