
Emacsy, an embeddable Emacs - krakensden
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/568774734/emacsy-an-embeddable-emacs
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krupan
So basically, this will be a library that you can use to add keyboard
shortcuts, a command-line (minibuffer) interface, and extensions/plugins to
your application, and they can all can be reconfigured, mixed, matched, and
extended, all on the fly without recompiling or even restarting your app.

Currently most of the apps I use don't have all that and I'm getting along
fine, but dang, it would be fun to see what could be done with that kind of
power added to them.

~~~
shizzy0
Yep, you got it exactly right. :)

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lispm
An alternative: use an embedded Common Lisp and connect to it via SLIME from
Emacs. Thus you could build an environment in Emacs for controlling the App
and download/executing Lisp code inside the App.

~~~
shizzy0
This is a fine way to work. I, for one, love SLIME. However, the main goal of
Emacsy is not to load code at runtime; it's to be able to modify the UI of
your application at runtime while providing some Emacs-like facilities.

Certainly, the normal way of embracing an application with Emacs is to turn
Emacs into your frontend as you suggest. That works well for a number of
applications, but it's not something you can distribute as a complete
application, instead you might include your-app.el and hope for the best.
Emacsy provides a way for you to improve your actual applications UI.
Moreover, it allows your users to modify the UI to suit themselves.

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fdr
I like the idea, but I'd like to better understand how the money is going to
be used on the Kickstarter page. Is it basically to spend, say, a month of
focused work to get the major girders of emacsy ready to go so the rest can be
iterated upon and crystalized? It's clearly not enough to fund the entire
effort to the point of having something usable, stable, and with adoption
(which would require working with the requirements of other projects), but I
get the sense that wasn't really the idea.

~~~
macavity23
Agreed. You have sections 'Introduction', 'Vision', 'Motivation', 'Goals',
'Anti-Goals', 'Emacsy Features' and 'How you can help?'. You're missing
'Plan'.

Tell me what you'll do with my $50 and I'm in.

~~~
shizzy0
Fair enough. My plan is to work out in the open on github, part-time this
Summer. I'll report noteworthy builds and solicit feedback. I believe that by
the deadline I can produce a usable and documented Emacsy library that
includes all the features mentioned above, and maybe even some features I
haven't mentioned. That should provide an excellent foundation for this
project to thrive after the deadline, and I expect to maintain it for sometime
after that.

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jcfrei
ok - there are now definitely too many kickstarter posts appearing here.
furthermore, why don't all those people on kickstarter not just write their
app/programm, without seeking funding. wasn't the whole open source community
a product of a lot of people using their spare time to create new software and
give it away for free (linus torvalds, etc.). that spirit is somehow lost on
kickstarter...

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chc
I agree that all the Kickstarters on here are starting to wear a bit thin, but
strongly disagree with the rest of what you said. Listen to yourself: You're
complaining that this person _doesn't want to work for you for free_. How can
you possibly feel entitled to that? Remember that old free software mantra:
It's like "free speech," not "free beer."

~~~
icebraining
No, that's not what parent is doing. For example, he may prefer they didn't do
the work at all. And "for you"? Where does that come from?

Personally, I have no problem with this - in fact, I'm paid to write FOSS -
but some people feel uneasy with the commercialization of the work that
traditionally belongs to communities of volunteers, and in certain situations
I feel the same.

~~~
chc
> _No, that's not what parent is doing. For example, he may prefer they didn't
> do the work at all._

He specifically complained about them taking money to do it. I genuinely don't
see how you could read that as "I would prefer it if you did not create an
embeddable emacs at all." His comment very strongly suggests that he was fine
with them doing the work, but he didn't want them to be paid for it.

> _Personally, I have no problem with this - in fact, I'm paid to write FOSS -
> but some people feel uneasy with the commercialization of the work that
> traditionally belongs to communities of volunteers_

I agree, and that's the attitude I'm arguing against. Free software has never
been about demanding that people not take money for their troubles. It has
often worked out that way for the vast majority of contributors, but I don't
see how the unprofitability of OSS development is a good thing. More money
going into free software means more free software and quite possibly higher
quality free software (since they don't need to be distracted by other work
that puts bread on the table), which is good for everyone. I have no problem
with somebody like you or the OP taking money in return for making useful
software.

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malkia
Sounds like something I wanted to make, got close with lispworks, but then
that's not very cheap. Now I'm doing it with lua, mainly due to luajit, but
lua is a bit harder to use in repl style, where only a function has changed
(it would work only if the function is global)

Nonetheless seems promising, and not futuristic (as in bells and whistles, but
nothing more)

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eschulte
This looks like it would be very useful for anyone who wants to develop C
applications with an embedded guile interpreter. However I think the pitch
would be more clear if it was sold as a Guile library for enhanced interactive
interfaces rather than as an Emacs derivative.

~~~
djcb
Guile is nice embeddable scheme, and seems to have a lot of momentum, cool new
developments. If this project is about making it a bit easier to integrate it
in your app, that would be great. It's not /too/ hard to embed guile, but I
certainly think there's room for making it easier.

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technomancy
If I had reason to believe that programs I want to use would be written with
this code, I would be happy to back it. I don't have a lot of hope for that
though.

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zackzackzack
Why not just run emacs through emscripten?

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kiba
Can you explain why it accomplish the same goal as emacsy?

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zackzackzack
It wouldn't. It was more of a realization that I had while I was reading
through the kickstarter.

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Arelius
Because, it's not as simple as that. A huge amount of the C code is
interfacing with platform libs, emscripten doesn't just fix that.

~~~
zackzackzack
Fuck, I hate to "actually..." you, but emscripten actually does do a
tremendous amount of work with platform libs.

Examples: [http://syntensity.blogspot.com/2011/05/emscripten-12-doom-
on...](http://syntensity.blogspot.com/2011/05/emscripten-12-doom-on-web.html)
<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/331>
<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki/Filesystem-Guide>

Why I know this: I spent a fair portion of winter break trying to port the
R-project into Javascript. It went nowhere (damn fortan), but I learned a ton
about emscripten and compiling.

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Arelius
I suspect however, that it doesn't support X11 and many of the other required
libraries that are required by Emacs.

Also, don't feel bad about "actually..." ing me, I'd prefer to know the truth,
than to think a falsehood.

~~~
Arelius
The links you reference are mosly for OpenGL, SDL, and File I/O, which is a
small part of what Emacs actually needs.

