Re: [Evolution-hackers] External editor plugin

[Paul Smith <paul mad-scientist us>]

On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 08:20 -0400, Reid.Thompson wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 11:22 +0530, Sankar wrote:
> > Will such a workflow be not best done by having vi/emacs style
> > key-bindings for the composer body area , rather than opening a
> > external program ?
> 
> Is this being implemented/considered?  If so, where is it hosted?

The problem with "emacs-style key bindings" is that, for those of use
who've been using Emacs almost as long as we've been using computers,
they are never complete enough.  Bind-alikes are OK for some small text
editing areas, but for something like email you really miss all the
"extra" keybindings that a real Emacs gives.

Don't get me wrong: some compatibility is better than none.  Invoking an
external editor is also useful and something I'd be interested in trying
out (I used Emacs VM mode for mail for years and years before I had to
connect to an Exchange server, just so I could have full Emacs editing
for my mail).

However, the most ideal situation that I can imagine would be to figure
out how to make Emacs "embeddable".  Then it can become a universal
editor plugin, for Evo, FireFox text boxes, Eclipse, etc. etc.  Start up
Emacs in the background and have applications that need an editable box
contact it to create new child windows containing real Emacs buffers.

I would actually cry if I could get that. :-)