summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/2022/captions
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to '')
-rw-r--r--2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main--chapters.vtt32
-rw-r--r--2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main.vtt756
2 files changed, 788 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main--chapters.vtt b/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main--chapters.vtt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..24aba25c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main--chapters.vtt
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+WEBVTT
+
+
+00:00:00.000 --> 00:02:33.540
+GNU Emacs and its purpose
+
+00:02:33.640 --> 00:03:46.280
+Lisp as the extension language
+
+00:03:46.280 --> 00:06:14.640
+JavaScript versus freedom
+
+00:06:14.640 --> 00:07:23.307
+Updating "An Introduction to Emacs Lisp Programming"
+
+00:07:23.407 --> 00:08:31.707
+More memorable package names
+
+00:08:31.807 --> 00:10:23.620
+Simplifying the command interface
+
+00:10:23.620 --> 00:11:22.220
+Modularity
+
+00:11:22.220 --> 00:12:55.460
+Editing formatted text
+
+00:12:55.460 --> 00:15:31.300
+Not the equivalent of a modern web browser
+
+00:15:31.300 --> 00:17:01.500
+Getting involved
diff --git a/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main.vtt b/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main.vtt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..5873b47b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-rms--what-id-like-to-see-in-emacs--main.vtt
@@ -0,0 +1,756 @@
+WEBVTT captioned by anush
+
+NOTE GNU Emacs and its purpose
+
+00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.960
+Hello! I'm going to talk about what I would like to see
+
+00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:11.240
+in GNU Emacs in the future,
+
+00:00:11.240 --> 00:00:17.600
+and what I would prefer not to find there.
+
+00:00:17.600 --> 00:00:22.080
+This is all within the context
+
+00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:25.360
+of GNU Emacs and its purpose.
+
+00:00:25.360 --> 00:00:30.600
+GNU Emacs is a part of the GNU operating system,
+
+00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:33.300
+and the purpose of the GNU operating system
+
+00:00:33.400 --> 00:00:38.840
+is not simply to do a good job technically,
+
+00:00:38.840 --> 00:00:42.640
+not simply to be good to use.
+
+00:00:42.640 --> 00:00:45.760
+Its main purpose, its overall purpose,
+
+00:00:45.760 --> 00:00:48.560
+is to give people freedom,
+
+00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:54.760
+and to help them value and defend that freedom.
+
+00:00:54.760 --> 00:01:00.160
+A GNU package, by being a convenient, well-written program,
+
+00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:06.000
+should contribute to that overall ethical and social goal,
+
+00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:10.440
+and not only to the usefulness of our software.
+
+00:01:10.440 --> 00:01:14.080
+This is true for GNU Emacs
+
+00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:18.720
+as much as it is for any other free program we’ve developed.
+
+00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:25.320
+In fact, GNU Emacs is the first GNU program that I released.
+
+00:01:25.320 --> 00:01:28.800
+I had written some other things before that,
+
+00:01:28.800 --> 00:01:30.600
+but didn't release them at that time.
+
+00:01:30.600 --> 00:01:34.200
+There was no particular use in doing so.
+
+00:01:34.200 --> 00:01:36.007
+So it was through GNU Emacs
+
+00:01:36.107 --> 00:01:38.307
+that I learned about various things
+
+00:01:38.407 --> 00:01:44.240
+such as software licenses and how to defend freedom.
+
+00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:50.407
+You're of course familiar with what GNU Emacs is today,
+
+00:01:50.507 --> 00:01:54.240
+thanks to the contributions of thousands of other people
+
+00:01:54.340 --> 00:01:56.967
+who came after me.
+
+00:01:57.067 --> 00:01:58.880
+What would I like?
+
+00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:01.433
+What would other people like?
+
+00:02:01.533 --> 00:02:06.480
+Lots of people come to Emacs familiar with VS Code,
+
+00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:10.520
+and they say, "Please make Emacs more like VS Code.
+
+00:02:10.520 --> 00:02:15.840
+Change everything that you did in the 1980s and 90s
+
+00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:18.320
+to be like that other thing."
+
+00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:24.200
+That wouldn't be feasible even if we wanted to.
+
+00:02:24.200 --> 00:02:30.440
+Our goal is not to be... not resembling VS Code.
+
+00:02:30.440 --> 00:02:33.540
+Any resemblance is coincidental.
+
+NOTE Lisp as the extension language
+
+00:02:33.640 --> 00:02:37.940
+But in particular,
+
+00:02:38.040 --> 00:02:43.774
+we do not want to have extension languages other than Lisp.
+
+00:02:43.874 --> 00:02:47.474
+Emacs Lisp is the variant of Lisp
+
+00:02:47.574 --> 00:02:49.474
+that we've always supported,
+
+00:02:49.574 --> 00:02:52.960
+which has evolved along with Emacs.
+
+00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:57.400
+We can conceivably have Scheme as well,
+
+00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:01.040
+if we can sufficiently solve the problems,
+
+00:03:01.140 --> 00:03:03.760
+the technical problems of making Scheme
+
+00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:06.480
+and Emacs Lisp interoperate.
+
+00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:11.600
+We did some design work, I think that was with Tom Lord,
+
+00:03:11.600 --> 00:03:15.880
+whom the community will greatly miss.
+
+00:03:15.880 --> 00:03:19.240
+In the 1990s, there are challenges that remain;
+
+00:03:19.340 --> 00:03:21.360
+maybe it can be done.
+
+00:03:21.360 --> 00:03:27.960
+But a non-Lispy language would be a mistake.
+
+00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:33.000
+It would divert our development focus into areas
+
+00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:37.480
+that we don't need, languages that are less powerful,
+
+00:03:37.480 --> 00:03:46.280
+less beautiful, and less desirable for the purpose.
+
+NOTE JavaScript versus freedom
+
+00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:52.120
+However, the language that we above all shouldn't support
+
+00:03:52.120 --> 00:03:57.233
+is JavaScript. That's not because of the language itself.
+
+00:03:57.333 --> 00:04:00.480
+I don't know the JavaScript language,
+
+00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:04.200
+I've heard people say it's rather clumsy
+
+00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:07.520
+and not well designed, but I don't know this.
+
+00:04:07.520 --> 00:04:12.400
+In any case, it's not what my views are based on.
+
+00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:14.740
+There's something much worse about JavaScript,
+
+00:04:14.840 --> 00:04:18.800
+which is not the language itself, but how people use it.
+
+00:04:18.800 --> 00:04:23.640
+Namely, it's been adopted as a way for a network server
+
+00:04:23.640 --> 00:04:26.120
+to send a program to your machine
+
+00:04:26.120 --> 00:04:30.120
+without your even noticing, so that this program,
+
+00:04:30.120 --> 00:04:35.007
+written by you don't know who, will run on your computer
+
+00:04:35.107 --> 00:04:37.200
+and do you don't know what.
+
+00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:39.674
+And you're supposed to just trust
+
+00:04:39.774 --> 00:04:43.640
+all and sundry developers of software
+
+00:04:43.640 --> 00:04:45.840
+for the sites you visit,
+
+00:04:45.840 --> 00:04:51.320
+which very commonly do malicious things, often unknown
+
+00:04:51.320 --> 00:04:55.680
+to the people who are running the server itself.
+
+00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:59.320
+They paid someone else to design a website
+
+00:04:59.320 --> 00:05:01.307
+and they probably said, oh,
+
+00:05:01.407 --> 00:05:04.440
+make it fashionable and attractive.
+
+00:05:04.440 --> 00:05:09.760
+And they didn't insist, don't snoop on the visitors,
+
+00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:12.840
+even if they understood what the issue was.
+
+00:05:12.840 --> 00:05:20.480
+So these sites snoop. It's a serious problem.
+
+00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:24.080
+The problem comes not from the language JavaScript,
+
+00:05:24.080 --> 00:05:28.680
+but from the fact that browsers, by default,
+
+00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:32.440
+will pull in JavaScript code that gets sent to them
+
+00:05:32.440 --> 00:05:35.833
+and run it to do anything at all.
+
+00:05:35.933 --> 00:05:39.320
+Emacs is supposed to defend your freedom.
+
+00:05:39.320 --> 00:05:42.520
+It's supposed to help you to defend your freedom,
+
+00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:45.640
+and lead you to defend your freedom,
+
+00:05:45.640 --> 00:05:47.200
+which means it shouldn't lead you
+
+00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:50.960
+to throw your freedom away as soon as you visit a site
+
+00:05:50.960 --> 00:05:53.920
+that tries to send you a non-free program
+
+00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:58.280
+to run straight off of that other machine.
+
+00:05:58.280 --> 00:06:04.080
+So it's important not to lead users
+
+00:06:04.080 --> 00:06:06.520
+to do computing this way.
+
+00:06:06.520 --> 00:06:10.800
+So what are some good things
+
+00:06:10.800 --> 00:06:14.640
+that we would want instead of this?
+
+NOTE Updating "An Introduction to Emacs Lisp Programming"
+
+00:06:14.640 --> 00:06:19.774
+One thing we want
+
+00:06:19.874 --> 00:06:26.474
+is to update the "Introduction to Emacs Lisp Programming"
+
+00:06:26.574 --> 00:06:29.480
+by the late Bob Chassell.
+
+00:06:29.480 --> 00:06:34.720
+It's a book that makes it easy for even non-programmers
+
+00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:38.000
+to learn to write simple programs in Emacs Lisp.
+
+00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.200
+And from there, they can go on to do better.
+
+00:06:41.200 --> 00:06:44.800
+We made a pretty big change in Emacs Lisp
+
+00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:49.480
+a few years ago, implementing lexical scoping by default.
+
+00:06:49.480 --> 00:06:57.360
+Originally, Emacs Lisp used to be entirely dynamic scoping,
+
+00:06:57.360 --> 00:07:01.960
+like some of the earliest Lisp interpreters.
+
+00:07:01.960 --> 00:07:06.520
+This is a change that should have a careful job
+
+00:07:06.520 --> 00:07:10.560
+of updating for the introduction.
+
+00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:14.600
+I'm sure we've made it clear in the reference manual,
+
+00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:18.400
+but that's not what beginners read first.
+
+00:07:18.400 --> 00:07:23.307
+We need something to teach them in lexical scoping.
+
+NOTE More memorable package names
+
+00:07:23.407 --> 00:07:30.440
+Another thing we could use is to make it easier
+
+00:07:30.440 --> 00:07:33.880
+to understand the facilities that we have.
+
+00:07:33.880 --> 00:07:38.560
+For instance, I think every package
+
+00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:42.200
+that you might load into your Emacs and run
+
+00:07:42.200 --> 00:07:47.680
+should have a name that helps you remember what job it does.
+
+00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:51.274
+It doesn't have to be super long to tell you
+
+00:07:51.374 --> 00:07:53.507
+what job that package does.
+
+00:07:53.607 --> 00:07:56.774
+You can read the description to learn that.
+
+00:07:56.874 --> 00:07:59.600
+But once you've read the description,
+
+00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:02.974
+it should be memorable. When you see that name again,
+
+00:08:03.074 --> 00:08:06.507
+you should realize, oh, that's the package I could use
+
+00:08:06.607 --> 00:08:11.880
+to do "less" and so. We've had a tendency
+
+00:08:11.880 --> 00:08:17.840
+to give packages names for the sake of pure wordplay
+
+00:08:17.940 --> 00:08:23.474
+or lack of obvious meaning,
+
+00:08:23.574 --> 00:08:28.188
+and I think we should add on, to those packages,
+
+00:08:28.189 --> 00:08:31.707
+names that people will remember.
+
+NOTE Simplifying the command interface
+
+00:08:31.807 --> 00:08:39.200
+Also, there are ways we can simplify the command interface
+
+00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:43.760
+of Emacs. For instance, there are many different parameters
+
+00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:48.000
+users can specify that can have several values,
+
+00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:51.707
+and sometimes you do various kinds of editing
+
+00:08:51.807 --> 00:08:54.440
+in one session. That's normal in Emacs,
+
+00:08:54.440 --> 00:08:57.740
+and you might want different parameter settings
+
+00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:00.307
+for different kinds of editing.
+
+00:09:00.407 --> 00:09:06.200
+So you specify parameter value A, do some editing,
+
+00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:10.240
+you specify parameter value B, and do some editing,
+
+00:09:10.240 --> 00:09:13.720
+and you'd switch back and forth, so you want
+
+00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:17.440
+to switch back and forth between these parameters.
+
+00:09:17.440 --> 00:09:22.607
+I think we should aim ...
+
+00:09:22.707 --> 00:09:26.640
+People have added various commands to switch
+
+00:09:26.740 --> 00:09:30.400
+between the last two or n values of this parameter,
+
+00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:32.674
+and another command to switch
+
+00:09:32.774 --> 00:09:36.740
+between the last two or n values of this [other] parameter,
+
+00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:41.360
+and then that parameter, you know, and that parameter.
+
+00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:44.667
+I think we should be able to have
+
+00:09:44.767 --> 00:09:49.120
+a switch between the last n values command
+
+00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:54.320
+that works on various different parameters,
+
+00:09:54.320 --> 00:09:57.040
+and thus makes it easy to remember
+
+00:09:57.040 --> 00:09:59.240
+that there is this facility.
+
+00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:03.774
+Because right now the commands to do that are all ad-hoc,
+
+00:10:03.874 --> 00:10:08.540
+and if you don't use a toggling among the last n values
+
+00:10:08.640 --> 00:10:11.740
+of a given parameter, you won't know how to do it.
+
+00:10:11.840 --> 00:10:15.267
+It won't be obvious that there is a way,
+
+00:10:15.367 --> 00:10:17.667
+so you'd have to go to a suitable manual
+
+00:10:17.767 --> 00:10:20.100
+and study for a while to think of that.
+
+00:10:20.100 --> 00:10:23.620
+We could make this easily discoverable.
+
+NOTE Modularity
+
+00:10:23.620 --> 00:10:30.140
+There is another kind of modularity that's important,
+
+00:10:30.140 --> 00:10:34.100
+and that is modularity at the level of maintenance.
+
+00:10:34.100 --> 00:10:38.207
+This is something all programmers know about, of course,
+
+00:10:38.307 --> 00:10:43.300
+but in Emacs, various parts interact with other parts,
+
+00:10:43.300 --> 00:10:47.980
+and we've tried to make them modular in design
+
+00:10:47.980 --> 00:10:50.380
+by using lots of hooks,
+
+00:10:50.380 --> 00:10:54.380
+but we haven't gone as far as we could.
+
+00:10:54.380 --> 00:10:58.060
+With some effort, we could find calls
+
+00:10:58.060 --> 00:11:00.220
+from over here to over there
+
+00:11:00.220 --> 00:11:03.140
+that could be replaced by use of hooks,
+
+00:11:03.140 --> 00:11:05.940
+so that we could reduce the extent
+
+00:11:05.940 --> 00:11:09.874
+to which you need to know about one part of Emacs
+
+00:11:09.974 --> 00:11:12.607
+to maintain another part of Emacs,
+
+00:11:12.707 --> 00:11:17.580
+and I think that as we keep adding more facilities to Emacs,
+
+00:11:17.580 --> 00:11:22.220
+this kind of modularity will be an investment that pays off.
+
+NOTE Editing formatted text
+
+00:11:22.220 --> 00:11:27.140
+There’s one big area of features
+
+00:11:27.240 --> 00:11:30.700
+that I would like to see in Emacs,
+
+00:11:30.800 --> 00:11:33.180
+and that's the ability to edit
+
+00:11:33.180 --> 00:11:40.340
+formatted documents in WYSIWYG, to be able to edit
+
+00:11:40.340 --> 00:11:47.940
+a letter or a scientific mathematical paper with formulas
+
+00:11:47.940 --> 00:11:52.900
+or a nicely laid out manual,
+
+00:11:52.900 --> 00:11:56.660
+looking at what it's really going to look like.
+
+00:11:56.660 --> 00:12:00.460
+Now we have free software to do this.
+
+00:12:00.460 --> 00:12:04.660
+For instance, I use LibreOffice some of the time.
+
+00:12:04.660 --> 00:12:08.100
+Sometimes it's faster than writing something
+
+00:12:08.100 --> 00:12:11.860
+to be formatted with a text formatter
+
+00:12:11.860 --> 00:12:16.180
+and then formatting it. But when I use LibreOffice,
+
+00:12:16.180 --> 00:12:19.220
+I always miss the commands and facilities,
+
+00:12:19.220 --> 00:12:22.574
+the editing facilities of Emacs.
+
+00:12:22.674 --> 00:12:26.500
+I'd like to have them both together, something with
+
+00:12:26.500 --> 00:12:30.340
+the text formatting capabilities of LibreOffice
+
+00:12:30.340 --> 00:12:36.060
+or even better of TeX, but the editing commands
+
+00:12:36.060 --> 00:12:40.300
+and facilities of Emacs. This would be a big job,
+
+00:12:40.300 --> 00:12:45.980
+but it can be made up of a lot of medium-sized jobs.
+
+00:12:45.980 --> 00:12:50.020
+If people start working on those medium-sized jobs,
+
+00:12:50.020 --> 00:12:52.060
+then in a number of years
+
+00:12:52.060 --> 00:12:55.460
+we'll have something absolutely amazing.
+
+NOTE Not the equivalent of a modern web browser
+
+00:12:55.460 --> 00:13:01.140
+But one thing I think we really shouldn't have
+
+00:13:01.140 --> 00:13:06.500
+is the equivalent of a modern web browser.
+
+00:13:06.500 --> 00:13:10.940
+The World Wide Web started out in the 1990s
+
+00:13:10.940 --> 00:13:13.774
+in a much simpler form,
+
+00:13:13.874 --> 00:13:17.820
+where a web page described its contents,
+
+00:13:17.820 --> 00:13:21.180
+and the web browser laid them out,
+
+00:13:21.180 --> 00:13:23.707
+and the user could parameterize
+
+00:13:23.807 --> 00:13:27.140
+how to lay out various kinds of situations.
+
+00:13:27.140 --> 00:13:31.707
+This was not only convenient for users
+
+00:13:31.807 --> 00:13:35.874
+who wanted to control things and understand things,
+
+00:13:35.974 --> 00:13:39.640
+it was also freedom-respecting
+
+00:13:39.740 --> 00:13:43.020
+because the layout was done by your browser.
+
+00:13:43.020 --> 00:13:48.100
+If you had a free browser, you were in control,
+
+00:13:48.100 --> 00:13:51.620
+even though the browser was complicated already.
+
+00:13:51.620 --> 00:13:54.707
+But starting around two decades ago,
+
+00:13:54.807 --> 00:13:58.820
+there was an explosion in the complexity of browsers
+
+00:13:58.820 --> 00:14:02.780
+as companies wanted to have more and more control
+
+00:14:02.780 --> 00:14:07.700
+over exactly what would appear on a user's screen.
+
+00:14:07.700 --> 00:14:12.374
+So they invented lots of features to control that,
+
+00:14:12.474 --> 00:14:15.907
+features where the user couldn't really customize
+
+00:14:16.007 --> 00:14:18.307
+how something would actually appear
+
+00:14:18.407 --> 00:14:21.207
+because the whole point was that
+
+00:14:21.307 --> 00:14:23.707
+the company could control that.
+
+00:14:23.807 --> 00:14:27.020
+And JavaScript was sort of the ultimate level
+
+00:14:27.020 --> 00:14:32.007
+of "the company controls everything."
+
+00:14:32.107 --> 00:14:38.500
+Because of this, going beyond the simple level
+
+00:14:38.500 --> 00:14:43.540
+of web page formatting features in Emacs
+
+00:14:43.540 --> 00:14:50.940
+is basically heading down a path that leads to subjugation.
+
+00:14:50.940 --> 00:14:54.740
+It's a path that we need to stay away from.
+
+00:14:54.740 --> 00:15:00.307
+It's a path to an unjust world of computing
+
+00:15:00.407 --> 00:15:03.420
+that you can easily see around you.
+
+00:15:03.420 --> 00:15:08.600
+Web browsers nowadays are designed to display ads
+
+00:15:08.700 --> 00:15:11.567
+that you may not want to see.
+
+00:15:11.667 --> 00:15:17.900
+They're designed for DRM.
+
+00:15:17.900 --> 00:15:22.420
+They're designed for companies to snoop on you
+
+00:15:22.420 --> 00:15:26.300
+in unobvious ways. And all of that
+
+00:15:26.300 --> 00:15:28.980
+we should protect ourselves from,
+
+00:15:28.980 --> 00:15:31.300
+protect our users from.
+
+NOTE Getting involved
+
+00:15:31.300 --> 00:15:39.980
+So I hope that some of you will be enthusiastic
+
+00:15:39.980 --> 00:15:42.060
+about some of these changes,
+
+00:15:42.060 --> 00:15:46.940
+especially towards editing formatted text.
+
+00:15:46.940 --> 00:15:51.980
+If you want to get involved, we have
+
+00:15:51.980 --> 00:15:57.820
+a development discussion list called emacs-devel@gnu.org.
+
+00:15:57.820 --> 00:16:02.380
+You can join that. You can also,
+
+00:16:02.380 --> 00:16:05.740
+if you get interested in working on a package
+
+00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:09.500
+and you're not an experienced Emacs Lisp developer,
+
+00:16:09.500 --> 00:16:13.640
+it's a very good idea to look for an experienced developer
+
+00:16:13.740 --> 00:16:14.980
+to talk with.
+
+00:16:14.980 --> 00:16:19.220
+Make sure you can write programs in Emacs Lisp first.
+
+00:16:19.220 --> 00:16:24.260
+It's not useful to take up the expert’s time learning that.
+
+00:16:24.260 --> 00:16:27.307
+You can still learn it from the introduction.
+
+00:16:27.407 --> 00:16:31.660
+But after that, when it's a matter of how to design
+
+00:16:31.660 --> 00:16:36.180
+your favorite package, do have a discussion with developers.
+
+00:16:36.180 --> 00:16:39.060
+They'll give you design ideas
+
+00:16:39.060 --> 00:16:43.180
+that will help you make a package that we put into Emacs.
+
+00:16:43.180 --> 00:17:01.500
+Now it's time for questions.