Re: The statement on what is orgmode.

[Ivan Andrus <darthandrus@gmail.com>]

On Dec 7, 2012, at 9:50 AM, David Rogers <davidandrewrogers@gmail.com> wrote:
> brian powell <briangpowellms@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> So, again, seriously, this thread is misnamed.  "What can't you do in
>> Emacs/OrgMode?"  What can't it be used for?--this should be the thread!
>> 
>> I'd really like to know.  Every week or two, something comes off my very
>> tiny list, which is just about empty.
> 
> Seriously seriously?
> 
> Things you can't do in Emacs that feel as if they *should* be practical,
> even though they currently are not
> 
> - Web browsing with ease, and with a full list of currently-expected
>  features (i.e. features to make the general public say "Wow! This is
>  much better than Firefox! I'm switching to this for banking, and for
>  everything else as well!" - not "Umm, why does it look like
>  this?"). This single (admittedly huge) feature, probably along with
>  the next one, are IMO the "killer features" that Emacs does not have.

Well, "with ease" is the problem there, eh?  I think that's the problem with most of the rest of these as well.  I think the problem is someone thinks, "Hey, X would be cool in Emacs" and so they start implementing it.  But then it's not as cool as they thought and since it _really_ hard to compete with some of the existing software that does X, they give up and the result is that it "barely works".    I have included some links below as evidence.  I have no affiliation with any of them (even as user) so I cannot say whether they work or don't or how well, etc.  This list is intended for entertainment purposes only, comes with no warranty expressed or implied… It just amazes me the things that people are willing to try to implement in Emacs.

> - Ability to continue working in other buffers when one buffer is
>  busy. Combine this feature and the one mentioned above, and I (perhaps
>  along with a lot of other people) move from two primary every-day
>  applications down to one.

I agree, this would be very nice.

> - WYSIWYG word processing with multiple fonts per page, adjustable
>  margins, and named styles (not saying it should ever be implemented,
>  just saying it's something Emacs can't currently be used for)
 
Well, there is enriched-mode.  I did use this once briefly.


> And how about fantasy-but-would-be-really-useful features? Nearly unlimited.
> 
> - Fully-functioning, practical Org-mode & Gnus & Emacs on a touch screen

Would Emacs be Emacs without 5 modifier keys?

> - Optical character recognition within Emacs

http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/info/emacspeak_002docr.html

> - Text entry by voice (including programming languages) within Emacs

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SpeechToText

> - Hand-written text entry directly into Emacs, including filling in web forms

Maybe if you speak Chinese: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC6l8gDaYzQ


> And then comes the truly unlimited category of "What, are you crazy???"

Yes, Emacs users are crazy!

> - Emacs Movie Editor

Maybe you haven't heard of https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gneve/ ?  I was originally going to just reply with just this link, but then I did some searching and found the rest.

> - Emacs Music Recording Studio

Not a studio, but maybe a step in the right direction: http://emacswiki.org/emacs/erec.el

> - Emacs Audio-To-Text Song Lyrics Transcriber

This one seems very hard, and in fact I could not find anyone who has tried.

> - "SkypEmacs" simultaneous videoconferencing and collaborative text
>  editing, where the participants all type into the same document at
>  once, but also their entire voice conversation is automatically
>  transcribed to plain text, and that transcription saved in the same
>  directory as the document.

I think this is probably only chat, but there is https://github.com/buzztaiki/emacs-skype

> (i.e. things that prove "It isn't all text after all, but some of it is".)

:-)

-Ivan