Re: What improvements would be truly useful?

[Phillip Lord]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > No, it really isn't. A document is a user-centric feature -- it's a
>   > piece of work that stores information in a way that it useful to the
>   > user.
>
> I disagree with you there.  If something can't be copied to various
> places and looked at, I say it is not a document.  It may be some
> other kind of thing.
>
>   > The self-contained file notion is a developer issue.
>
> No, it is absolutely crucial to being able to use the document
> in the ways we are accustomed to use documents.

I have to disagree with this. I mean, it was true 10 years ago, but it
is not now.


>   > Following your definition, MS Word becomes a document editor and MS Word
>   > Online does not.
>
> I did not state a definition of "document editor" -- it's not part of the 
> point
> I want to make -- so I think that is a misunderstanding.

No, I think not. Consider this scenario. I start editing some text on
google docs with a collaborator; after a while we export the doc into
word, share this with Dropbox, then eventually one person takes it over.
Is this text really not a document till we download it?

All of which gets back what I think was the point of the OP; Emacs would
be a better tool if it supported the web. We've been having intense
discussions about widget toolkits; what about a web-delivered Emacs? The
Web and Mobile together make up the majority of computing these days.

http://www.ymacs.org

If you want a good example.

Phil