Re: FYI: "Emacs and XEmacs" on the Emacs Wiki
"Vladimir G. Ivanovic" <vgivanovic(a)comcast.net> writes:
I didn't mean to start a war and perhaps we should just let the
topic
wither away.
I just felt that not enough people wrote to explain why they preferred
XEmacs compared to GNU Emacs. For instance, and I will add this to the
article, I really don't like looking at fonts that are not
anti-aliased. Actually, I hate to, and I avoid it if I can. So, GNU
Emacs is a non-starter for me.
XEmacs 21.5 is _Beta_. So is Emacs 23. So for antialiased fonts you
are AFAICS reliant on beta either way. Except that Emacs 22.3 for Gtk
at least has antialiasing outside the text area (menus, title bar and
stuff like that).
One problem with such a comparison chart is that it is more likely to
reflect what users _believe_ are the differences than what they actually
are. Another problem is that on a mere checklist scale, there is quite
a lot that is present at a checklist level in both editors, but the
quality of implementation is vastly different.
Things like tooltips. Both have them. In Emacs, they have been the
default for years and are even present for menu entries. In XEmacs,
they have been there for a few more years, are switched off by default,
and interfere with character entry. They also pop up in decorated
windows (probably one of the reason for their sluggish behavior) and
tend to obstruct things. There is a reason they are off by default.
Things like font-locking. Both have it. In XEmacs, is has been the
default for quite a few years. In Emacs, is has become the default only
after quite some fights, and after performance regressions for large
files have been fixed. As a consequence, XEmacs still becomes useless
for large files in many modes. Somewhat ironically, XEmacs has the
facility to open files of size 1GB whereas Emacs draws the line at
256MB. And that's what I find often the case: on the checklist level,
XEmacs sometimes offers more while it sucks. And I should not be
surprised if the experience for XEmacs users is similar, just because
you get hooked on _those_ features that actually work well in your daily
workflow and decide that you don't really need those that don't.
For a lot of features, the dividing point is not just the presence or
absence of the feature, but the actual look and feel and usability of
it, and the integration into the daily workflow.
And that makes it pretty hard to come up with a good check list for
decision making.
--
David Kastrup
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