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Comment by sigzero | Hacker News Reader

Err....Emacs is probably a better OS than Android. :)

Which is coincidentally likely why you can never have it on iOS (interpreted code and all...)

There's no rule in the App Store against interpreted code that's not downloaded.

While that's true, the restriction is done in such a way that there'd be no sane way for most people to get their .emacs or equivalent loaded onto the thing, which would make such a port beyond useless. Android's far looser restrictions mean there should be no such issues there.

So you could have an emacs that... wasn't extensible. Seems pointless. Not that this hack has a lot of point either (a world class editor on a platform without a development toolchain?). Still, more pointless I guess.

An Emacs that's not extendable can be useful. At least, you don't have to make your brain switch modes.

I've lost the count of how many times I have closed a browser window while trying to cut text.

I fixed the C-w issue by training myself to always close windows using it (for a while in the Gnome 2 days I was using a custom metacity theme with no title bars or buttons at all). The mode switching goes into your muscle memory and your body starts to recognize the difference between editor and GUI context.

Who says there's no development toolchain?

Terminal IDE and AIDE for Java. SL4A for Python, JavaScript and Ruby. Ruboto. There's a version of Octave now. And I'm sure there's more besides. There are definitely development options on an Android device.

I've been using SL4A and the Jota editor to teach myself Python (professionally, I'm a .Net developer) on my Nexus 7 and I've been pretty happy with it. I can carry it everywhere, and anytime I have a few minutes to spare I can open up the ebook I've been reading, then go to the editor and/or the immediate window and try some things out. And if I'm at my desk, I can use a hardware keyboard, making things even easier.

Emacs improves the possibilities even more. At the very least, it's a far better editor than any of the current editors (unless you're a vim fan using Terminal IDE) for any scenario where you need an editor.

At best, it could get a whole package management system of supporting utilities that are available to it inside its terminal, and becomes a good way to develop with virtually any language that has a compiler that can be ported to Android. Maybe it even gets w3m browser mode, music player mode, and other awesome Emacs-as-OS features.

I meant there's no standard toolchain. Specifically there's no straightforward way to develop a vanilla Android app in Android. It's not self-hosting in the same way that "real" platforms are; until that is fixed, porting development tools in isolation isn't going to amount to much more than an amusing curiosity.

> Specifically there's no straightforward way to develop a vanilla Android app in Android.

How is what you want different from what AIDE offers?

With AIDE, you develop an Android app more or less like you would in Eclipse, and it compiles it and installs it into the system like any other Android app. It's in your application list, and you can run it like any other Android app.

How many different ways do you need to be told what to use to develop Android apps on Android? AIDE and TerminalIDE can be used to develop Android apps from start to finish including signing and the whole ball of wax. You can even open up your Eclipse projects and just pick up from where you left off.

Really?

Unless otherwise approved by Apple in writing, no interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s). Notwithstanding the foregoing, with Apple’s prior written consent, an Application may use embedded interpreted code in a limited way if such use is solely for providing minor features or functionality that are consistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application.

That would certainly exclude Emacs.

This is just silly. Emacs isn't an OS. It provides an API to some library and system calls, but it isn't even multi-threaded.

If your comment was meant as a hat tip to the Symbolics Genera system, that was a full-fledged OS, then there could be debate. I love Lisp and would dearly love to customize my Jelly Bean experience with it, but then we'd need to get into a discussion of what is really better, and 80's OS or Android.

I took it as more of a nod to the old emacs joke (probably told by a vim user): “Emacs is a great operating system; too bad it doesn’t have a decent editor”

IIRC, one of the original goals of Emacs was to replicate the environment of Lisp machines. With that in mind, it could be considered an OS not unlike Smalltalk environments such as Squeak.

IIRC, one of the original goals of Emacs was to replicate the environment of Lisp machines.

No, that was Stallman working for LMI reproducing all of the Symbolics environment, because he was pissed that MIT sold the rights to work done in the AI lab to Symbolics.

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