[HN Gopher] Emacs Symbolic Integration
___________________________________________________________________
Emacs Symbolic Integration
Author : eklitzke
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-01-06 09:03 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gnu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gnu.org)
| agumonkey wrote:
| Oh yeah.. of course it calc.
|
| On the tinier lib side there's bindat, to fiddle with binary data
| straight from elisp.
| submeta wrote:
| Emacs has got to be one of the most misunderstood pieces of
| technology. It's often made fun of [1], just because of this
| misunderstanding. Saying Emacs is an editor (mostly), is like
| saying a smartphone is a phone (mostly).
|
| Emacs is actually an appliction framework (and a Lisp machine)
| with a unified interface where one application can share data
| with other applications via "buffers" very easily because the
| basic data is text (no proprietary or fancy datastructures that
| can get outdated at some time). With this underlying structure
| (plus with the integrated programming language Lisp) you can
| connect, combine, configure (to your liking) every application
| within Emacs easily. In non-Emacs world, using isolated apps
| (islands), I'd "beg" the dev teams to add this or that feature to
| make it more productive [3]. Not so in Emacs-land, where I can
| change every aspect of an app within minutes.
|
| I have legacy tools / apps that were discontinued, and my data is
| stuck in those formats [2], and I don't have the time to migrate
| those documents.
|
| Emacs is here to stay. And offers many apps (packages) for many
| use-cases: org-mode for project management, task-management,
| taking notes, writing complex documents, creating technical
| documentation with inline images, ascii tables, with embedded
| code (that can get run via org-babel); lsp-mode which transforms
| Emacs into a decent IDE; calc for doing basic to complex
| calculations within Emacs (documents); org-babel for doing
| literate programming; eshell for using your shell within emacs;
| mu4e which is a very good email client (says someone who used to
| use MailMate and was thrilled I could use keyboard shortcuts to
| control lots of aspects of my email client), and many more.
|
| Emacs is the tool that will grow on you, and it will get better
| the more you learn about how to configure it.
|
| ---
|
| [1]: "a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"
|
| [2]: EccoPro PIM from the 90s, AskSam (full text database) from
| the 90s, NoteMap (outliner), MS Access databases (from the
| 90s/2000s) with old format, and many many more.
|
| [3]: Whenever I liked an app, I'd quickly start writing with dev
| teams back and forth in forums or via email. Bear.app,
| Ulysses.app, iA Writer, DevonThink, etc. Constantly writing to
| the dev teams, asking to include this or that feature.
| pierrebai wrote:
| Which is exactly the reason why... VSCode is winning the
| editors war.
|
| The main difference is that it chose javascript instead of lisp
| as its universal language, which, in the current world, is a
| much better choice for adoption.
|
| Also, saying app can share data easily because the format is
| text buffer is either a tautology or a non-sequitur: not having
| a defined format can't be broken, sure, but it also cannot be
| reliably used. ask anyone who had to maintain bash/awk/perl
| labyrinthine assemblies...
| bachmeier wrote:
| > VSCode is winning the editors war
|
| In what sense is there a "war"? That's a serious question.
| Emacs, VS Code, and quite a few of the other popular editors
| are open source. You can download them and use them. I have
| both Emacs and VS Code on my machine, and I use both of them,
| but for different purposes.
|
| Now, if you wanted to talk about a war between open source
| and traditional closed-up-tight, walled-garden commercial
| software, I could get on board. It's really hard for me to
| understand your framing when you have freely available
| products that are not in any way exclusive.
|
| On your other point, if I were to speculate, I'd say VS
| Code's main advantage is that it doesn't have a 1970's
| graphical interface. Port GNU Emacs to Monaco, give it some
| good default settings, and see what happens to adoption.
| pierrebai wrote:
| War as a metaphor? I mean, have you ever seen two editors
| battling out in the field? No.
|
| The war is in usage % among users. VSCode is the most
| widely used editor by far now, reaching over 51%. [1] Usage
| converts into further growth, having more and better
| support from extension developers.
|
| [1] https://blog.robenkleene.com/2020/09/21/the-era-of-
| visual-st...
| jrockway wrote:
| There is no war. VS Code created the language server
| protocol, which works great inside Emacs. VS Code's
| existence has made Emacs even better.
|
| If it were a war, they'd just DDoS gnu.org or something,
| not make Emacs better.
| Bjartr wrote:
| VSCode is winning the war that Sublime Text (and it's python
| api) was winning a few years back (and perhaps Notepad++
| before that). A few years from now VSCode might still reign
| supreme... or it might not. If you're fine jumping to the
| next winner every few years, great. If you'd rather just
| invest in one editor platform and stick with it for a couple
| of decades, and know you can rely on it to stick around and
| be supported that long... well, you might want to take a look
| at emacs.
| DDSDev wrote:
| I think that elisp is one of the many a strengths of Emacs,
| along with it's strong extensibility, customization, and
| general user freedom. I think language choice is a smaller
| part of the pie compared to Microsoft's backing, networking
| effects within companies, and visual appeal and design.
|
| However, I do agree with you that Emacs onboarding process
| can be difficult if you don't know lisp, in that you have to
| now learn a new language and the API for interacting with the
| editor. That is why some friends and I recently decided to
| embed JavaScript/TypeScript into Emacs as a means of
| controlling the editor [1]. We will see if we can prove you
| right.
|
| [1] https://github.com/emacs-ng/emacs-ng
| PuercoPop wrote:
| > The main difference is that it chose javascript instead of
| lisp as its universal language,
|
| That is not the main difference. The main difference is that
| Emacs can be extended on the fly. While VS follows the
| traditional plugin approach.
|
| For VSCode to the have the same kind of extensibility it
| would have to allow opening an inspector on the _running_
| instance. Click an element, jump to its source edit the
| source on the fly and have that change persisted. Or allowing
| your settings to patch (which by the nature of ES6 modules is
| not something you will be able to do).
|
| The on the fly extension is crucial for quick QoL
| improvements to your workflow. You can spend 5 minutes
| writing a function instead of having to setup a
| project/plugin to something as trivial as say, copying a .env
| file and updating some values when you create a [git]
| worktree.
|
| > Which is exactly the reason why... VSCode is winning the
| editors war.
|
| The main reason why VSCode is 'winning' the 'editor' wars is
| because Microsoft is spending tons of money to build a great
| product. Emacs, vim, and other open source projects can't
| compete as they don't have nearly the same amount of
| resources. They have healthy communities and are thriving
| FLOSS communities but people who are scratching an itch won't
| be writing monthly tours of new features like
| https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_52 f/e.
|
| > ask anyone who had to maintain bash/awk/perl labyrinthine
| assemblies...
|
| Text in Emacs is richer than plain-text. You have overlays to
| annotate it with metadata, text properties, you can attach
| callbacks to it, etc. It is only at the boundaries that you
| have to resort to plain-text for interoperability purposes.
|
| This means it is easy to inter-op with CLI utils but present
| a richer, more powerful interface. Ej. dired uses ls.
| vmarsy wrote:
| > The main reason why VSCode is 'winning' the 'editor' wars
| is because Microsoft is spending tons of money to build a
| great product. Emacs, vim, and other open source projects
| can't compete as they don't have nearly the same amount of
| resources
|
| It doesn't seem to be the main reason, otherwise how can
| you explain Sublime text popularity prior to VSCode?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Sublime scratched an itch for a lightweight batteries-
| included text editor. As such, it competed with vim more
| than with Emacs. VS Code, on the other hand, tries to be
| your one-stop shop for code-related things, which makes
| it play in Emacs's sandbox.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _The main difference is that it chose javascript instead of
| lisp as its universal language, which, in the current world,
| is a much better choice for adoption._
|
| That at best bifurcates the community (possibly along the age
| lines). I for one consider it to be a bad choice _for me
| personally_. JavaScript ain 't a particularly pretty
| language. And it's nowhere as nice as Emacs Lisp.
|
| > _saying app can share data easily because the format is
| text buffer is either a tautology or a non-sequitur_
|
| I'd agree, though with caveat that an Emacs buffer is not
| just an array of text. It's an array of text with bells,
| whistles, and a semantically well-designed API layer. This
| lets extensions to mostly compose nicely.
|
| But I'd say the more important feature is that _nothing is
| sandboxed_. That means extensions can detect and work around
| potential conflicts with other extensions, up to the point of
| extending or replacing any function such conflicting
| extension uses (though with proper extension design - which
| is by this point a part of Emacs culture - this is rarely
| needed). It 's easy for any extension to expose an API layer
| for interop, and Emacs itself provides enough of an API
| surface that usually you don't even need to do that
| explicitly.
|
| More importantly, _I myself_ can trivially extend or fix
| extensions as well. Something conflicts and errors out? Flip
| a debugger trap, wait for it to error again, poke around the
| source, find the culprit, patch it in your config. Granted,
| you need a passing familiarity with Emacs Lisp for that
| (though IMO, one should consider getting comfortable with
| Emacs Lisp a part of becoming a power user of Emacs). But you
| _can_ do that, quite easily, and the entire environment
| supports you in doing this.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The main difference is that it chose javascript instead of
| lisp as its universal language
|
| The main reason is that it's backed by Microsoft, both
| because of the investment that provides and the visibility it
| provides.
|
| JavaScript over Lisp probably helps, but if VSCode had Visual
| Basic as it's extension language it would still be doing
| strong, and not because VB is a good or popular language
| independently.
| taeric wrote:
| I just want to underline your point on it having corporate
| backing.
|
| Commentary on our industry seems bent on the idea that
| things succeed in inherent quality. Reality seems to be
| full of contrary examples.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Programming languages too. It seems to me that popularity
| of programming languages is directly tied to amount of
| corporate backing behind them. There's plenty of popular
| languages that have a large company sponsoring its
| development and marketing.
| taeric wrote:
| Agreed. I've taken to this idea even stronger. "Simple"
| languages are believed to be simple mainly off the
| propaganda that pushes that they are simple.
| travv0 wrote:
| > "a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"
|
| That joke seems to imply a perfect understanding that it's more
| than a text editor. It is, however, referred to as "The Emacs
| Editor" in its documentation and "an extensible, customizable,
| free/libre text editor -- and more" on its official website,
| which could lead to some confusion about its primary purpose if
| that's not editing text. I do begrudgingly use Emacs as my main
| editor because that's what the communities of the languages I
| like use, but I do find the editing experience to be sub-par
| compared to other editors I've worked with, and I find that
| there are better external alternatives to any of the common
| elisp applications, barring org-mode.
| dhagz wrote:
| I use evil-mode and that has alleviated any complaints I had
| about the editing experience. But then again, the modal
| nature of vi is how I think about editing text.
| travv0 wrote:
| I use evil-mode as well.
| finder83 wrote:
| I generally agree with your statement, but the primary thing
| that prevents me from switching to a more modern editor is
| counsel/ivy. I really wish that VS Code or others offered a
| similar experience of filtering a buffer/project so quickly
| and easily. The editing experience of Evil with ivy is
| fantastic.
|
| I just wish that things like autocomplete or debugging were
| easier to get right across languages...
| teataster wrote:
| The whole point of Emacs is: you get to change whatever you
| don't like. Furthermore, why use Emacs as an IDE if you don't
| like it? Who cares what editor you use? Unless you use Emacs,
| then they make fun of you for using it, while relying on your
| efficient text processing skills to do refactoring.
| travv0 wrote:
| I care that the editor I use has good support for the
| language I'm writing, so, like I explained in my post, I
| use Emacs since that's where the language's community puts
| their effort. Also, to address your first sentence, the
| things I don't like about Emacs can't be fixed by writing a
| bit of elisp.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| The thing is that editing/text-navigation modes are so
| universally useful that it makes perfect sense to make a
| supposed "OS-level" text editor. How many plugins,
| extensions, etc. are there so that people can use Vim
| bindings in web browsers, IDEs, the window manager, etc.?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yup. All this.
|
| Emacs being a platform within a platform is a feature. It comes
| with an extra benefit: it's a free (libre) platform. Completely
| shielded from corporate interests. There's no bullshit inside.
| No proprietary formats, no unnecessary network dependencies, no
| "X as a Service". Just a community of folks maintaining and
| expanding a parasitic OS that embraces interoperability and
| personal productivity above all.
| submeta wrote:
| When I realized how powerful Emacs is, how it enables me to
| create a very streamlined workflows in my day-to-day work, I
| realized I have no need at all for a crippled tablet (not
| naming the company) that won't allow me to use Emacs (or many
| other full-featured software), and that's when I put my fancy
| tablet on eBay for sale realizing that all the apps that I
| used on it created yet more islands of isolated data that I
| will have time and effort to get that out of those formats.
|
| Not many fellows are aware of the value of the freedom to use
| a platform and tools that are open, that give you the freedom
| to do what you want with it. They see a fancy interface, and
| they are sold, not seeing the long term costs, the loss of
| control, the crippled-ness, the trajectory of the whole
| industry towards a vision that takes away many forms of
| freedom that constituted personal computing as we know it.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| > the basic data is text
|
| How can this work? Let's say I am developing a spreadsheet.
| Each cell has a formula, and it has a rendered text version.
| How can this work in Emacs? I want there to be a "underlying"
| strongly typed version of the data which is rendered, but Emacs
| forces them to be the same.
|
| Unix (with pipes) also works with plain bytes, but many pipes
| are not necessarily rendered. Given that emacs is inherently
| visual, because you see the buffer if you're working with it,
| why can't there be data structures?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| See [0] for examples of spreadsheet support in Org Mode
| (which, while often discussed as a thing of its own, is still
| part of default Emacs installation).
|
| Basically, your table is drawn as text (with Emacs
| automatically managing its layout, and providing various
| shortcuts for larger manipulations like inserting or swapping
| rows/columns). Formulas are recorded as text below the table.
| They get recomputed on demand, or can be made to recompute on
| each edit[1].
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-
| intro...
|
| [1] - https://orgmode.org/org.html#Advanced-features
| describes a bunch of features, including recomputation of
| select rows on edit/navigation, as well as marking which rows
| are names of columns or cells vs. data.
| teataster wrote:
| Emacs comes with a pretty good plain text spreadsheet. I have
| not figured out how to use it for large amounts of data
| (caped at 999 rows) but it's way more powerful than "your
| favorite spreadsheet software" as it allows for both calc and
| elisp formulas. All in plain text yeah, types are as strong
| as elisp's. And maybe I am wrong, but spreadsheets are not
| famous for strong types. I have horror stories to share on
| that respect.
|
| I guess you could strong type by using a type cast formula
| with elisp...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/ses/ind
| e... - I presume you're referring to SES mode
|
| SES is great as a quick & dirty spreadsheet. I also used it
| when I started "living" in emacs about 12 years back. I had
| SES worksheets for various things I'd often use Excel for.
| One was a stock tracker (downloaded data periodically form
| Yahoo! Finance), a tax estimator, a paystub tracker, a
| budget, leave tracker. Some were just worksheets for work
| problems (had a set of formulae and equations related to
| test cases, plug in numbers and determine what the expected
| output should be, or reverse it plug in received output and
| see what input should recreate it).
|
| If you use org-mode, it has its own format for doing the
| same thing:
|
| https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-
| intro...
|
| If I use emacs-as-a-spreadsheet, I tend to the latter
| anymore since I org-mode is my primary use of emacs anymore
| (with org-babel for editing source code).
| teataster wrote:
| I meant org-mode. I didn't know about the other one.
| Thanks for the info.
|
| I do not use Emacs as spreadsheet often. As my
| spreadsheet needs are larger than org-mode is comfortable
| with. Pretty much business people sharing data at work.
| But I have used for reports and whatnot and it's fine.
| abeppu wrote:
| I agree, and I am frequently impressed by the tools people have
| built on this platform. But I think the "it's a great operating
| system" line is wrong because it has underinvested in
| scheduling and process management.
| imdoor wrote:
| > "a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"
|
| I've seen this thrown around when people joke why vim is better
| than Emacs and i think it's funny. But, seeing that Emacs has
| evil-mode, which is basically an implementation of vim on top
| of the said "operating system", i'd say it's false. Or ironic
| :D
| tharne wrote:
| As a vim user who recently migrated to emacs, this is 100%
| true. Emacs is now, among other things, a superset of Vim.
|
| Before using Emacs, I had always read that emacs has a steep
| learning curve. I found this not to be case since the vim
| emulation was so good and so complete, I was reasonably
| productive pretty quickly even though I obviously have a ton
| to learn about emacs.
| emidln wrote:
| > [1]: "a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"
|
| There is even a decent editor application available these days
| in evil[0].
|
| [0] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil
| sachdevap wrote:
| One amazing use of symbolic integration:
| https://github.com/johnbcoughlin/calctex
|
| Create latex equations in calc! :D
| iib wrote:
| This looks interesting and I want to use it. It seems to not be
| available on melpa, and the installation instructions for linux
| are missing, though. Are there any instructions for
| installation on linux that I miss? Apart from the cloning and
| tinkering that I will inevitably do if there is no easier way.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Sure, emacs is an OS [1], you can write any kind of programs for
| it.
|
| On the other hand, you can do symbolic calculus in Scheme - see,
| for example, MIT Scheme-based _Structure and Interpretation of
| Classical Mechanics_ (which, incidentally, is perfectly usable
| from inside emacs).
|
| [1] http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-
| linux....
| fooofw wrote:
| Of course, in this example, the symbolic calculus functionality
| is distributed with the OS, or arguably even as part of it,
| which I guess is a bit more rare than simply having the option
| of installing it.
| choeger wrote:
| That is certainly impressive. But why does emacs have that
| functionality?
| worik wrote:
| I often find it useful t do a calculation while I am editing.
| For example when I write a invoice I have to calculate taxes.
|
| I have not had to use the more advanced features. I did not
| know that they were there. Now I know, perhaps I do need them?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's a bit like asking why Windows has a calculator :).
|
| Emacs is best viewed a Lisp execution platform with a built-in
| text UI. Much like it has a "c++ app", "terminal app" and
| "compile this" app, it also ships with a "calc app" (literally
| called "calc"). Since it was being used by lot of mathy people
| for lot of mathy stuff, it ended up being a proper scientific
| calculator application.
|
| (Also, Lisps are inherently friendly for doing any kind of
| symbolic calculations. A Lisp system is one of the least
| surprising places to find a symbolic integrator in.)
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Emacs is best viewed a Lisp execution platform with a
| built-in text UI.
|
| Hence the old joke "Emacs is a fine OS, but its text editor
| sucks."
| mschaef wrote:
| > But why does emacs have that functionality?
|
| GNU Emacs is a 36 year old tool that's been targeted at
| programmers its entire life, is built on an interactive Lisp
| environment, and actively encourages external improvements and
| contributions. The more interesting question is why _wouldn't_
| it have that functionality.
| melling wrote:
| Emacs is a big Lisp interpreter.
|
| Elisp is the most popular Lisp in the world.
|
| Why wouldn't you want to improve it?
| vifon wrote:
| The manual actually answers this very question:
| https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/calc/His...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. Not only it's an amazing story of
| scope creep, it also revealed a bunch of features I didn't
| know calc had (e.g. unit handling, arbitrary-size math).
| funkaster wrote:
| thanks for the reference! love the final acknowledgement in
| there:
|
| > Final thanks go to Richard Stallman, without whose fine
| implementations of the Emacs editor, language, and
| environment, Calc would have been finished in two weeks.
|
| :D
| avar wrote:
| Have you tried asking your local psychotherapist?
| M-x doctor RET I am the psychotherapist. Please,
| describe your problems. Each time you are finished
| talking, type RET twice. Why does Emacs need
| Symbolic Integration? What do you think?
| I don't know, just answer the question! Why do you
| say you do not know just answer the question?
| [...]
|
| Maybe you'll have better luck than I did with mine.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Can't wait for someone to do a M-x doctor over GPT-3,
| AiDungeon style.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Oh my gosh, someone please add an M-x gpt-doctor. Hmm.. I
| wonder how we'd build the training dataset...
|
| How many other meme modes exist? I dug up the earliest
| commits I could find, and apparently one of the earliest
| hooks was "protect-innocence-hook":
| https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1327459335245422597
|
| If the buffer's filename is "sex.6", it asks whether the user
| is over 18. If so, it renames the buffer to "celibacy.1".
|
| Apparently it was in the file lisp/play/meese.el. Emacs
| archaeology is more fun than it should be.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's M-x zone, a bunch of games - anything from Tetris
| and Bubbles to Zork, morse code handling (M-x morse-region,
| unmorse-region), inserting interesting phrases for NSA
| spooks... There's a lot.
|
| There's also nyan-mode, made by yours truly, but
| unfortunately it does not ship with Emacs by default :).
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Who do we have to lobby to get nyan-mode into emacs
| mainline? Happy to send a recommendation email.
|
| Was surprised how high quality the repo is, too!
|
| https://github.com/TeMPOraL/nyan-mode
|
| It even has an accompanying blog post, which I found
| informative.
| http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2011-08-25-introducing-nyan-
| mod...
|
| And even a Show HN.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2906632
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words. I wouldn't call it high-
| quality, though. I wrote this back when I barely knew how
| to wield Lisp or use Emacs. I've gained much more
| experience in both since then; I keep promising myself
| that one of these days, I'll clean it up and make it a
| stellar little mode...
|
| As for getting it into mainline, I'd be OK with going
| through the FSF copyright paperwork, but I worry this
| will probably fail over the uncertain status of Nyan Cat
| image/music IP...
| hhggfdss wrote:
| You might not think it's high quality but I used it for
| years and preferred it to the other modeline place
| indicators and now that I've been reminded of it, I may
| go add it back to my config
|
| So thanks for your work
| boogies wrote:
| > I worry this will probably fail over the uncertain
| status of Nyan Cat image/music IP...
|
| That's how MooGNU was born:
| https://archive.org/details/M00GNU
| MaDeuce wrote:
| One of my favorites is "Zippy the pinhead" quotes (M-x
| yow). I believe this has been removed due to copyright
| issues, but it is still available if you look. Zippy's
| quotes could be sent to the doctor via M-x psychoanalyze-
| pinhead.
| fjcp wrote:
| >How many other meme modes exist?
|
| Here is the manual section listing all the "Games and
| Amusements" that ship with Emacs by default:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/A
| m...
| sn41 wrote:
| I think the Emacs doctor drilled down my insecurities down to
| a bad exam in school. (S)he ? claimed that his/her secretary
| will send me the bill, but I haven't been back so they must
| have forgotten.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| If you feel that the services rendered were useful to you,
| consider sending a donation to FSF :).
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| In general - developers use calculators all the time (most
| frequently via Google these days, but also via REPLs) so a
| dedicated calculator is a self-evidently useful widget for any
| editor. It's is not essential fir a new editor in 2021 but
| considering emacs has had Calc for some time, it is worthwhile
| to make improvements to widely-used legacy software. Many emacs
| users have used Calc in lieu of alternative "developer
| calculators" like Octave, the R REPL, etc, so it's not like
| Calc is an extraneous feature.
|
| It's uncommon for developers to deal with integral equations in
| their day-to-day work. But it's obviously not unheard of -
| integral equations show up naturally in many domains of finance
| and engineering. I've had to deal with numeric integration on
| .NET in one of my jobs. Sometimes an exact symbolic solution is
| easier for the developer and the CPU than a numeric technique,
| so for a small handful of developers a symbolic integral
| calculator is a handy (if somewhat specialized) tool, and not
| just some bell-and-whistle.
| a-nikolaev wrote:
| A healthier approach is to have a separate non-Emacs app that
| can do symbolic integration, which can be run seamlessly from
| within Emacs.
|
| Otherwise, with all its extensions Emacs starts giving the
| impression of an Apple-like walled garden, which is not a good
| comparison for a free software, no?
| thotsBgone wrote:
| How is it a walled garden if it's free, open-source software?
| patrec wrote:
| Who in his right mind would use an editor that cannot even do
| symbolic integration?
|
| Joking aside, I suspect that this is mostly due to two factors:
|
| 1. Emacs was used by a lot of smart people, and one of them,
| David Gillespie got carried away a bit.
|
| 2. Thirty years ago, when David Gillespie first started working
| on calc, emacs lisp (despite at the time lacking even floating
| points numbers IIRC!), was probably one of the most expressive
| fairly widely deployed languages around, particularly for the
| type of symbolic manipulation you need to do for computer
| algebra. And unlike other things that were used by smart people
| 30 years ago, emacs still sticks around, so survivorship bias
| also plays a role.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Because it can... don't underestimate the amount of unrelated
| things you can crame into a 40 year old software.
|
| Interestingly, nowadays it's really difficult to convince
| people to add new features, like enabling mouse scrolling by
| default [1].
|
| [1] https://lwn.net/ml/emacs-
| devel/20200906133719.cu6yaldvenxubc...
| linspace wrote:
| I don't think it's a valid example. The discussion is about
| the default configuration, not about removing mouse scrolling
| from the code. It's a really big thread nevertheless...
| ssivark wrote:
| Emacs is best understood not just as an editor, but as an
| integrated computing environment promoting user freedoms to the
| fullest extent possible in a manner naturally integrated with
| its user interface and extensibility. In that sense, it
| shouldn't be the least bit surprising to see the kind of in-
| built application suite one would expect from an operating
| system or desktop environment. One must also remember that
| historically the most common computer (power) users were
| academics, and not "software developers" -- so expect a lot of
| scratches for their itches.
|
| It's a bit like asking why does bash come with a utility like
| awk or bc; it's equally natural.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because awk and bc are UNIX programs that precede bash and
| are part of any POSIX certified UNIX, whereas bash is not.
|
| https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
| contravariant wrote:
| Damn I'd been searching for ages to find a proper calculator.
| Turns out it's Emacs. Now I just need to get it on my phone
| somehow.
| agumonkey wrote:
| As a palliative you can always use some hp48 emulator.. you get
| some forth and some lisp all at once.
| brlewis wrote:
| Android? Termux will run it, even the Termux in the Play Store.
| sea6ear wrote:
| What kind of phone are you using?
|
| If it's Android you can at least for the moment get Emacs on
| there using Termux. That's what I do - and it works pretty
| well. It might also be possible via UserLAnd, although I have
| not tried UserLAnd personally.
|
| It seems like iSH on iPhone may provide similar ability (again
| do not have direct experience) although it seems unclear at the
| moment how long it will be able to remain available.
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