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by zcam 5141 days ago
Also emacs provides an extensive platform with tons of modes to support pretty much anything you can throw at it, works in a terminal if needed, has an abstraction over files (buffers), debuggers, easy modes for vi/cua users, can connect to browser instance if needed and tons more.

Building a lighttable mode or even several small modes (libraries vs framework) for emacs would make more sense.

It is going to require a huge effort to duplicate a fraction of what it provides already.

But from a marketing point of view it is/was probably smarter to show eye candy to attract funding, but I am not sure it is the best route in the long run.
2 comments
Arelius 5141 days ago
The advantage of LightTable's approach is that using HTML, is a simple, trivially extensible and powerful way to provide advanced UI widgeting, something modern emacs supports very poorly. Mostly due to working in a terminal if needed, but I think it holds it back a bit. The closest thing we have in emacs is pixmap support, which is poor, and painful to use!

Though, is LightTable the best/easiest way to get that? I don't know, it may be easier to render emacs buffers into a webkit view, it may also not be.

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zcam 5141 days ago
> Though, is LightTable the best/easiest way to get that? I don't know, it may be easier to render emacs buffers into a webkit view, it may also not be.

That is what I meant with "connect to browser instances" (swank-js already allows that, among others). Basically when you need more advanced rendering, or browser environment when it is your target (browser based games and whatnot), this could be good enough and you can leverage a huge ecosystem for all the rest.

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Arelius 5141 days ago
Sure, it could be good enough, but the ecosystem has not been building up around that. Perhaps it's the seperate languages used, or the clunkiness of having to use another browser and all the setup just to render a simple graph. But I personally have not found an extension that takes advantage of that.
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neutronicus 5140 days ago
It's the versatility of emacs that keeps me coming back. I need to use R for this project? Python? C? Well, at least I can use it through the comforting interface of emacs.
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