Apple: iPad and Emacs

http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2010/05/apple-ipad-and-emacs.html

by mnemonik • 16 years ago

57 78 16 years ago

jjinux.blogspot.com

speek• 16 years ago

Would ssh-ing into another machine count?

mnemonik• 16 years ago

I don't think the Author actually cares about emacs so much as what emacs stands for. Emacs represents the Free Software movement, and for it to be on the iPad would mean that Apple has changed their perspective on software development.

dasht4• 16 years ago

No.

When you give control over YOUR computer to some third party, you are giving up you freedom. Apple insists on having that kind of control over iPad purchasers.

I can't speak for the FSF but I think it is a safe prediction that there will be no support port of GNU Emacs to iPad unless Apple changes its tune.

lallysingh2• 16 years ago

Say it with me:

The iPad is not a computer.

It's a web browsing appliance. Hackers want computers, full computers. And plenty of vendors (including apple) sell them in many different configurations, styles, and prices. Many other people do not want full computers -- they're a pain to manage and maintain, and their interfaces are too general-purpose and get in the way.

Complaining about the freedom about an iPad is like complaining about the freedom in your TV's firmware or (fairly-advanced) toaster.

mechanical_fish2• 16 years ago

So, as an iPad owner who is wondering about emacs, this is one avenue I've considered.

A second: distribute emacs as source and let people who own the developer kit compile and install it. Given the rather large overlap between developers and emacs users, this might not be so bad. But it may be hard to envision anyone going through the effort.

I'd be very curious to see what kind of emacs-like editor could be written in Javascript. Or a hybrid, with a JS front end Ajaxing away to a back end.

And, of course, there's the obvious alternative of writing something that looks and works sort of like emacs but is written in Objective-C. If indeed there is sufficient interest in a serious text editor for the iPad, the BBedit and Textmate folks would appear to be sitting pretty.

joubert8• 16 years ago

If you have an app store account, you can port it, install on your iPad, and make the code freely available so others with app store accounts can also build & install on their devices.

pook• 16 years ago

Ignoring that without an interpreted scripting language, you no longer really have emacs...

joubert8• 16 years ago

Huh?

dasht4• 16 years ago

Actually, from what the EFF is saying, you almost certainly may not port GNU Emacs to iPad or, for that matter, offer any derivative work of a GPL program in the app store.

If you agree to the terms of the App Store developer license, it appears that you would violate the GPL.

See: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-progra...

joubert8• 16 years ago

That's not what I suggested. Read my comment again.

kqr24• 16 years ago

App Store Only: Section 7.2 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple's SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store,

I think this is the most relevant section. Any distribution mechanism that bypasses Apple's app store is strictly verboten.

joubert8• 16 years ago

So all the open source iPhone code freely available online is in violation of the Apple agreement?

kqr24• 16 years ago

Maybe he can try ymacs -- an emacs like editor that runs in your browser.

http://www.ymacs.org/

Quick link to demo:

http://www.ymacs.org/demo/

dca2• 16 years ago

That's incredible. I've wanted something like that for a while now. Thanks for pointing it out. Are you aware of a vim oriented one anywhere? (I switch back and forth on which I prefer given the time of year / language of the hour)

kqr24• 16 years ago

Check out:

http://gpl.internetconnection.net/vi/

mechanical_fish2• 16 years ago

Ooh, my dream is alive! I'll try it out.

marbletiles• 16 years ago

No ctrl or meta keys on the iPad keyboard might make that tricky. (ymacs is amazing, though)

angusgr2• 16 years ago

Of course, you can get an external keyboard for the iPad, and that comes with Ctrl and Meta keys.

It's a fair point, though.

hogu• 16 years ago

ymacs is emacs in a browser.

emacs-w3m is a browser inside emacs

I just tried to run ymacs in a emacs-w3m, but it didn't work.

that woulda been cool though, emacs in a browser running inside a browser which is inside emacs.

jrockway4• 16 years ago

<iframe src=...

acg• 16 years ago

Are you sure that this will work on an iPad? Just because it's available in the browser doesn't mean it can be used. Take Google docs as an example.

rbanffy4• 16 years ago

Hmmm... An Emacs front-end to a cloud-based file-system.

That could be the basis of a very, very nerdy startup ;-)

yurifury• 16 years ago

I was anticipating an explanation of multi-touch allows the iPad to become a productive coding platform. Typing would still be slow, but is efficient code manipulation with emacs + iPad feasible?

apgwoz• 16 years ago

In an all keyboard controlled app that relies haevily on chording, not a chance.

larsberg• 16 years ago

No. Fat-fingering is a real problem on the iPad. Small screen + big fingertips => large minimum size for any hitbox => bad for getting lots of code on the screen

thought_alarm3• 16 years ago

If you want to try and build a version of emacs for the iPad that would be a fun exercise. If you bought an iPad with intention of downloading and installing a version of emacs you're doing it wrong, regardless of how Apple chooses to manage its app store.

Anyway, Apple ships emacs with OS X, and I think they're one of the last *nix venders who still installs emacs by default.

How ironic?

hyperbovine3• 16 years ago

It always surprised me that Apple still ships Emacs. It strikes me as just the sort of thing--bulky, unintuitive, feature-laden, slow--that Steve Jobs would have a personal vendetta against.

thought_alarm3• 16 years ago

Well, the NeXT engineers were firmly in the emacs camp, and that heritage is still present in the Cocoa text system.

I don't know if the iPad text system also supports emacs shortcuts, but if it did I'd rush out and buy a Bluetooth keyboard just as a token of solidarity.

jsz0• 16 years ago

Out of sight, out of mind. At least they include nano in the base system.

jrockway4• 16 years ago

Let me guess, you still call it "eight megs and constantly swapping". 1980 was a fun year...

sshirokov• 16 years ago

I'm curious what a native port of Emacs on an iPad actually contributes over an Screen/SSH session on a "real" machine with "real" compilers and tool-chains.

jjs• 16 years ago

I'm curious what a native port of Emacs on an iPad actually contributes over an Screen/SSH session on a "real" machine with "real" compilers and tool-chains.

To get it running, you'd need (a) the ability to modify, redistribute, compile, and install arbitrary code (including GPL'd code), and (b) the ability to run interpreters and virtual machines (emacs lisp).

So emacs itself is just a bellwether for the things he really wants in a computer.

rsl72• 16 years ago

We're unlikely to see emacs on the iPad, but it raises an interesting question in my mind. On the virtual keyboard, since we're not limited to pressing keys, might there be UI alternatives to the whole escape-meta-alt-control-shift behavior we're limited to today? control-x could be a swipe, for instance, or perhaps a larger area of the display could function as various temporary mode-specific functions. Dunno, just a thought.

angusgr2• 16 years ago

FWIW, the iPhone Terminal app for jailbroken users has similar gestures like this for the common control sequences.

They work pretty well, it just takes a while to remember which one is which (early on, trying to guess the Ctrl-C swipe can take quite a while.)

statictype• 16 years ago

Good point. The whole reason for using the keyboard is to avoid the 'cache miss' of moving your hand to the mouse. But on the ipad, the keyboard and screen are all the same, so it might actually be more efficient to use gestures

jimmyjazz14• 16 years ago

"Emacs was written by Richard Stallman, and it practically defines the Free Software movement (in a manner of speaking at least). Stallman's vision for the future of computing is very open, and Apple's vision for the future of computing is very closed. Hence, it's ironic that Emacs, which is such a profound part of Free Software history, can't ever run on the iPad."

I fail to see the irony.

swombat• 16 years ago

You know... it's ironic in the Alanis Morissette sense. As in, it's not.

jongraehl• 16 years ago

Irony can be construed pretty broadly, although I agree that she's beyond the pale at times.

shrikant• 16 years ago

Heh. Reminded me of this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg (Comedian Ed Byrne picking apart the song)

krishna2• 16 years ago

I know JJ - he is a die-hard Vim fan! :)

jrockway4• 16 years ago

The point of Emacs is that you can write code to solve immediate problems. The point of the iPad is that you can't run your own code on it.

Problem.

But what's great is that you can just buy yourself a $300 netbook that will run Emacs just great, and you have plenty of money left over to donate to the FSF.

mankoff• 16 years ago

I use emacs on my iPhone and plan to use it on an iPad if I get one. It isn't the official emacs, but is 'mg' the MicroGnuEmacs editor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mg_%28editor%29

Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad and Cydia will allow you to install Vim or mg, plus Ruby, Python, etc. MG even supports LaTeX syntax highlighting, although of course the compilation must be done elsewhere.

TechDogg• 16 years ago

How did you get mg to work on iphone? I try to open a file with mg on my iPod Touch and I get "bus error".

Apple: iPad and Emacs

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