2011/6/11 Ted Zlatanov
<address@hidden>
On Sat, 11 Jun 2011 12:48:57 +1000 Tim Cross <address@hidden> wrote:
TC> Of course, if emacs had a decent web browser able to handle _javascript_ etc
TC> and there was some way of having multiple virtual desktops, my .Xsession
TC> would likely end with something like
TC> exec emacs
TC> In the meantime, I will experiment with various wm until I find the one that
TC> is as light weight as possible while still providing all the features I
TC> want. Then I will craft my own .Xsession and hopefully again reclaim at
TC> least the feeling I know what is going on and am in control! If anyone has
TC> any recommendations on non-GNOME (or KDE for that matter) wm they have found
TC> good, I'd be i9nterested in hearing about it (possibly privately to spare
TC> the list!).
My work on Emacs as a desktop environment is exactly what you're talking
about, I think. Look at those threads, especially
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/139687 where I list all the
things I think are needed. I'm just starting now, should have a usable
emacs-panel.el with functional tiles and some WM integration eventually,
and then I will add the rest gradually (help is welcome, of course).
I don't plan to replace the WM, but everything else is fair game.
Ted
Hi Ted,
Yes, I saw your posts regarding emacs as a desktop environment. As someone who was largely restricted to using emacs as my desktop environment (for over 13 years, I was pretty much totally blind and used emacs with emacspeak for nearly everything), I can appreciate where you are coming from. However, over the last few years, this was becoming increasingly more difficult and less adequate as more and more things moved to a web based environment using _javascript_. As html5 rolls out, I suspet things will become worse.
There has been some interesting work done which tries to create a closer link between emacs and a sophisticated browser, such as firefox. T. V. Raman has done some really interesting work in this area which might be worth looking at.
For emacs to really be a good desktop environment in this age, I think it must have the ability to provide access to rich web content - content that uses _javascript_, html5 etc. It would seem there are two possible approaches to this - do the necessary work in emacs or provide some mechanism that would allow emacs to access and possibly manipulate data that is already partially processed by a web browser such as firefox or chromium.
As we can see from the lack of development with emacs w3, there does not appear to be much interest in developing a full featured web browser in emacs. Much of T. V. Raman's work has focused on using a web browser like firefox to do the heavy lifting of processing the content, _javascript_, etc and then providing an interface that emacs can use to obtain the final result for display. Others have provided browser plugins to allow emacs to provide editing support etc.
IMO for emacs to be a really useful desktop environment, it will be necessary to provide some sort of web interface and is able to support rich web content. I suspect that development and maintenance of a stand-alone elisp package, similar to w3, is not practical and that the best result would be to develop interfaces that allow browsers like firefox or chromium to do what they do best, but allow emacs to access the results of their work and to provide input so that emacs can drive the browser and 'cherry pick' bits.
WRT things like an emacs panel, its not clear to me what real benefit such things would have if you are looking at emacs as the desktop environment. Essentially, what would an emacs panel provide for emacs that you don't already have or is it just putting together what we do have in a more convenient form?
Tim