[maxxk]

For me the most important benefits of GUI text editor are:

1. Selection and system clipboard integration. 2. Ability to quickly scroll to look something without moving the cursor, then return where I was by pressing an arrow key (one of the largest pain points of emacs for me). 3. Proportional fonts with proper text rendering, especially for notes.

I use 1 and 2 almost on a subconscious level, and it's hard for me to be productive in an editor which doesn't support these features. I'm sure, vim users can relate.

[yakubin]

Emacs has a GUI, which supports 1 and 3 out-of-the-box. It's the only way I use Emacs. It's the main reason why I use Emacs and not Vim.

[maxxk]

Yeah, I used GUI emacs on and off for more than a decade, most recently — for a couple of months as a primary editor and email client. Emacs with gcc+pgtk patches feels great. Unfortunatley, due to scrolling and, most importantly, C-x/C-c vs cua-bindings (which was non-issue on OS X ⌘ but is an issue in X11 and Wayland) I never feel myself completely comfortable using emacs.