Ben Wing <ben(a)666.com&gt; writes: ... Ben, where do you get this from? Maybe that's the case under MS Windows, but in the Unix world XEmacs is quite popular. For instance, in my company (ArsDigita), there are quite a few people using XEmacs rather than GNU Emacs. Also, XEmacs has been made popular by Linux distributions. In Croatian Linux newsgroups, most people start with (and ask questions about) XEmacs because they feel it's gentler to beginners, even if it's not exactly as true as they think. Note that many people come to XEmacs for the pretty pictures -- 3D modelines, nicer-looking scrollbars and menus, support for images, the vague "X" in the name, etc., but they do come. XEmacs is one of the (if not *the*) hottest editors out there, much of it thanks to the work you and Chuck did in creating it, and thanks to the perseverance of Steve & others in maintaining it afterwards. This is true. However, I believe we should have a really cooled-down response argument to make for a *credible* last word. I think your one is too heated and too personal, and in some things simply wrong (see the assignments discussion.) If you want to, I might try to write such a document over the week-end, and present it for your evaluation. If XEmacs were really in its death throes, I might agree with you. As it is, I shudder to think exactly what kind of user-base the Macchiavelian advocacy you propose might buy us. Instead, we should "fight" with better code and better features. Specifically, the code *you* are writing and the features you are introducing are the way to go. Trust me, we have more than enough name recognition for these features to actually make a difference.