Normally I wouldn't question the usefulness of a project, but I'm having trouble seeing why this would be worthwhile.
Emacs already runs natively on every operating system for which Chrome also runs, so the portability aspect is not so important. And most of the time you would want to have a shell and even a compiler, so the sandboxing is kind of a problem.
I guess a sandboxed emacs is kind of a strange thing to think about. The trouble with emacs is that it brings in so many dependencies that you are getting dangerously close to replicating a full OS in a browser tab, but then you might as well just use a normal operating system (or a VM).
The idea of a Chromebook that I can run emacs on is really appealing, so much so that I did just that, but used Crouton. I thought I'd mainly be ssh'ing into a server, but actually have done a lot of stuff locally. Chromebooks make a really nice laptop if you can work completely in the shell and browser. It's all very simple.
I could see a use for this for having org-mode available in a browser, that would be useful, but it's a lot of work to go to just for that.
It was, years ago. But right now, it takes less memory than most of my chrome tabs. New frames pop up very quickly, and the only thing that makes me notice it starting from scratch is disk I/O.
It's not entirely about the size when talking about tons of depends and stuff, that's just more complexity to worry about. Note that this isn't some comment comparing complexity of emacs to (insert whatever you think I may be comparing) as I'd bet emacs is fairly simple compared to many things it could replace, I'm just throwing out the idea that when I personally am adverse to deep dependencies and tons of functionality, I'm usually worried about the complexities and not the size.
Oh, that's sad. I had not looked at his history. Always happy to see people put money where their mouths are and put out some code, unlike me of course. I just sit there pontificating.
Comments
Normally I wouldn't question the usefulness of a project, but I'm having trouble seeing why this would be worthwhile.
Emacs already runs natively on every operating system for which Chrome also runs, so the portability aspect is not so important. And most of the time you would want to have a shell and even a compiler, so the sandboxing is kind of a problem.
I guess a sandboxed emacs is kind of a strange thing to think about. The trouble with emacs is that it brings in so many dependencies that you are getting dangerously close to replicating a full OS in a browser tab, but then you might as well just use a normal operating system (or a VM).
The idea of a Chromebook that I can run emacs on is really appealing, so much so that I did just that, but used Crouton. I thought I'd mainly be ssh'ing into a server, but actually have done a lot of stuff locally. Chromebooks make a really nice laptop if you can work completely in the shell and browser. It's all very simple.
I could see a use for this for having org-mode available in a browser, that would be useful, but it's a lot of work to go to just for that.
I'll just put this out there: emacs isn't big.
It was, years ago. But right now, it takes less memory than most of my chrome tabs. New frames pop up very quickly, and the only thing that makes me notice it starting from scratch is disk I/O.
It's not entirely about the size when talking about tons of depends and stuff, that's just more complexity to worry about. Note that this isn't some comment comparing complexity of emacs to (insert whatever you think I may be comparing) as I'd bet emacs is fairly simple compared to many things it could replace, I'm just throwing out the idea that when I personally am adverse to deep dependencies and tons of functionality, I'm usually worried about the complexities and not the size.
I was thinking this would be wonderful. I am torn between digging into Common Lisp or Clojure, and thought this would be a great first idea.
I am currently stuck with emacs only, but have been playing with MobileOrg for Android. What are you and others doing?
Why was child (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9302857) killed? I thought it was very interesting. Thanks for mentioning, berntb.
Because the user is banned, probably for being downvoted too often in his previous flamewar.
Oh, that's sad. I had not looked at his history. Always happy to see people put money where their mouths are and put out some code, unlike me of course. I just sit there pontificating.