Link to our gitweb

[website] / index.html

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>    <!-- -*- html -*- -->
<!--#set var="css" value="sxemacs.css" -->
<!--#set var="title" value="SXEmacs Website" -->
<!--#set var="banner" value="Redefining Emacs" -->
<!--#set var="copyright" value="2004 - 2012 Steve Youngs" -->

<!--#include virtual="/templates/header.template" -->
<!--#include virtual="/templates/menu.template" -->
<!--#include virtual="/templates/support.template" -->
    <h2>What is SXEmacs</h2>
    <p>
      Hmm, that's actually not an easy question to answer.  At
      least, not easy to answer completely.  At the most basic of
      levels, SXEmacs is a text editor.  If you've ever used
      <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">GNU/Emacs</a> or
      <a href="http://www.xemacs.org/">XEmacs</a> you've probably
      seen the description that goes something like...
    </p>
    <i>
      ...is a highly customisable and extensible,
      self-documenting, real-time display editor and IDE.
    </i>
    <p>
      Ditto for SXEmacs.  Yep, SXEmacs is JAFE (Just Another Fine
      Editor).  Though, if that's <u>all</u> you thought it was,
      you'd be missing out.  There is very little that SXEmacs can't
      do, or at least, be made to do.  You can tailor it to your
      wildest dreams and imagination.  This is where the
      "customisable and extensible" part of the description comes
      in.
    </p>

    <h2>It's more than just an editor</h2>
    If you looked at any of the screenshots you would have seen
    that even though SXEmacs is a text editor, it can be oh so
    much more.
    <ul>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs is my Window Manager</b>.  Yes, that's right, with the
        XWEM and XLIB packages installed, SXEmacs becomes a very
        powerful, full featured, highly customisable Window
        Manager for X11.  Most of the screenshots here were taken
        using it.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs is my login shell</b>.  You can add
        /usr/local/bin/sxemacs to /etc/shells and change your
        login shell to sxemacs.  It <u>does</u> work.  Although we
        wouldn't recommend trying to run an X session from it. :-)
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs is my image viewer</b>.  SXEmacs supports a number of
        image formats right out of the box (GIF, XPM, PNG, JPEG,
        TIFF, X-Face).  If you compile SXEmacs with FFI support
        and have ImageMagic's libWand available you have a SXEmacs
        that supports all image formats that libWand does.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs is my mp3 player</b>.  I used to use mpg123.el
        for this, but now I use XWEM's xwem-mpd.el.  It hooks into
        mpd (an mp3 daemon).  There are other ways to hear the
        muzak like emms.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs balances my cheque book</b>.  With an elisp
        package called eMoney (currently only available via Steve
        Youngs' tla repo's, but one day will be an XEmacs package)
        SXEmacs turns into a reasonable home finance cash book
        program.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs can do the math</b>.  With Enhanced Number
        Types, there is very little that SXEmacs can't do
        mathematically. 
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs lets me communicate with my friends</b>.
        SXEmacs can be used as a MUA (Mail User Agent), a
        newsreader, an IRC client, even an ICQ client.  So you can
        keep in touch without leaving the comfort of your
        favourite editor.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs helps me with my databases</b>.  With support
        for PostgreSQL compiled in you can manipulate your PgSQL
        databases.  SXEmacs also has more or less complete support for
        sqlite, and there is also limited support for BerkeleyDB
        and GNU/dbm.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs makes VC comfortable</b>.  VC is short for
        Version Control and SXEmacs can make dealing with it a lot
        less painful.  There are SXEmacs VC frontends available
        for CVS, and GNU/Arch (tla).  There are also elisp
        libraries available that integrate with other VCs such as
        SVN, RCS, and SCCS.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs helps with my security</b>.  SXEmacs has
        support for OpenSSL and allows encryption, decryption, and
        digest functions.
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>SXEmacs helps me with my social life</b>. With such
        powerful elisp libraries as lj.el, twitter.el, facebook.el,
        and emacs-flickr.el, I can easily interact with social
        networking sites that keep me up-to-date with my friends, and
        easily commandeer those sites from within the comforts and
        confines of my SXEmacs session.
      </li>
    </ul>
    <p>
      That list is by no mean exhaustive.  Oh, and I nearly
      forgot... SXEmacs edits text too.  And it even helps you
      with that.  In many, many ways.  With things like syntax
      highlighting, context sensitive completion, keyboard macros,
      powerful search and replace, spell checking (on the fly if
      you wish), programming language aware indentation.  The list
      just goes on and on.  It would be a fair bet to say that
      whatever "feature" you like in other editors, there's a good
      chance SXEmacs has it too.
    </p>

    <h2>What SXEmacs has that XEmacs doesn't (yet)</h2>
    <p>
      Following is hopefully an up to date (at time of writing) list
      of the features that are in SXEmacs but are currently not
      (yet) in XEmacs 21.4.  I say XEmacs 21.4 because SXEmacs was
      forked from the XEmacs 21.4 code base and not the 21.5 code
      base.  With that said, however, most (all?) of what follows is
      unique to SXEmacs and isn't in XEmacs 21.5 either.
    </p>

    <ul>
      <li>
        <b>Win32</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs does not support the Win32 platform and it never
          will.  Yes, we consider this a feature.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>FFI</b>
        <p>
          This is the SXEmacs Foreign Function Interface.  It
          makes it possible to bring the functionality of almost
          any external library to elisp.  Two useful examples can
          be found in ffi-curl.el and ffi-wand.el.  The former
          allows SXEmacs to download files from the internet using
          any protocol that libcurl supports.  And the latter
          allows SXEmacs to view any image format that libWand
          supports.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>OpenSSL</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs can be compiled with OpenSSL that enables a
          range of cryptography and digest functionalities.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Autoconf 2.60</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs uses autoconf version 2.60 for its configuration
          scripts.  XEmacs 21.5 is using 2.59, but XEmacs 21.4 is
          still using autoconf 2.13.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>PostgreSQL</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs has better support for PostgreSQL 8 and the
          documentation has had some improvement here too.  Also,
          support for PostgreSQL is compiled in by default if
          pg_config is present and usable.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>sqlite</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs has fairly complete support for sqlite through FFI.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>C++ builds</b>.
        <p>
          SXEmacs does not support being compiled with a C++
          compiler.  GCC 3.4.4 or equivalent is required.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>More mouse buttons</b>.
        <p>
          In SXEmacs, you can bind up to 32 mouse buttons.  The
          first 26 of which can be used as modifiers.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Uptime</b>.
        <p>
          Every decent OS has an uptime util... SXEmacs is no
          exception. :-)
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Bootstrapping PUI</b>.
        <p>
          The SXEmacs PUI (Package User Interface) can be
          "bootstrapped" without the requirement of having
          <u>any</u> XEmacs packages pre-installed.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Enhanced Number Types</b>.
        <p>
          XEmacs 21.5 users might know this as "bignum".  SXEmacs
          has bignums and bigfloats and ratios like XEmacs 21.5,
          but it also goes way beyond the XEmacs implementation.
          Many, many, more number types and other mathematical
          goodies are supported in SXEmacs.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Raw strings</b>.
        <p>
          SXEmacs has Python-style raw strings.  It greatly
          reduces "backslashitis" when writing those hairy
          regexps. :-)
        </p>
        <p>
          <code>
            &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Normal regexp:
            "\\(?:^\\|[^\\]\\)\\(?:\\\\\\\\\\)*\\(\\\\[@A-Za-z]+\\)"<br />
            Raw string regexp: #r"\(?:^\|[^\]\)\(?:\)*\(\\[@A-Za-z]+\)"
          </code>
        </p>
        <p>
          XEmacs 21.5 now has raw strings.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>TTY font-locking</b>.
        <p>
          SXEmacs has improved default font-locking in a TTY.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>More image formats supported</b>.
        <p>
          This was mentioned under FFI, but it is worth noting
          again.  With FFI and libWand, SXEmacs can display any
          image format that is supported by Imagemagick's
          libwand. 
        </p>
        <p>
          Not only can SXEmacs view images, but it can edit and
          manipulate them as well.  In fact SXEmacs is a very good
          image manipulation program.  Take a look at
          <a href="http://lgarc.narod.ru/sxemacsen/wand-mode-en.xhtml">
            what SXEmacs can do</a> with images.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Embeddable kbd macros</b>.
        <p>
          This one is for JWZ.  See point 1.A of
          <a href="http://www.jwz.org/doc/xemacs-wishlist.html">JWZ's XEmacs wish list</a>
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Multimedia -- Audio</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs has support for a wide variety of sound servers,
          backends, drivers, and formats.  Audio outputs supported
          include: ALSA, aRts, ao, ESD, NAS, OSS, PulseAudio, and
          Jack.  Media stream handlers supported include: FFmpeg,
          Mad, sndfile, SoX, libmagic, as well as the
          pre-existing (from XEmacs days) internal audio support.
        </p>
        <p>
          Yes, SXEmacs can play mp3 and ogg.  We can even do so
          <u>asynchronously</u>. 
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Network Server Sockets</b>
        <p>
          Taking <code>open-network-stream</code> to the next
          logical step, SXEmacs can "listen" for, and act upon,
          incoming TCP/UDP connections.  Server sockets in SXEmacs
          are set up via <code>open-network-server-stream</code>.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Cached Compiled Regular Expressions</b>
        <p>
          Significant speed ups are possible through the
          application of exhaustive caching of compiled regular
          expressions. 
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>GNU Autotools Build Chain</b>
        <p>
          Not only does SXEmacs use autoconf 2.60 (and above), the
          entire build chain is now fully "autotooled".  We've done
          away with all those Makefile.in.in files and manual
          dependency tracking of the sources.  It's now all done
          with aclocal, automake, autoheader, autoconf.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>FHS Compliant Install Hierarchy</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs now installs to a much more 
          <a href="http://www.pathname.com/fhs/">FHS</a> compliant
          location.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Double Linked Lists</b>
        <p>
          Unlike ordinary lists that only have hooks into the head
          of the list (think car, cdr), a doubly linked list has
          hooks into both the head and the tail of the list.  This
          means you can operate on both ends of a doubly linked
          list.  You can also traverse a dllist in both
          directions, tail-wards and head-wards.  Ordinary lists
          only allow for tail-wards traversal.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Skip Lists</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs has a basic implementation of Pugh's skip
          lists.  Their efficiency is overwhelming when compared
          to alists or plists.  They also perform better on
          insertion and removal than large hash-tables (due to
          the resizing/rehashing which takes place).  They can
          be created almost as fast as lisp lists and thus beat
          hash-tables there, too.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Bloom Filters</b>
        <p>
          Bloom filters are a hash-table like data structure with
          the purpose of performing membership tests.  Unlike
          hash-tables bloom filters do not need to be resized
          despite the fact that they can carry an arbitrarily
          large number of objects.
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Recursive Directory Traversal</b>
        <p>
          SXEmacs has a recursive implementation of
          <code>directory-files</code> called
          <code>directory-files-recur</code>.  It is incredibly
          fast.  Sometimes even faster than GNU find(1).
        </p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <b>Support for 256 colors in XTerm and compatible terminals</b>
        <p>

          SXEmacs is now capable of properly using the
          <code>termcap</code> and <code>terminfo</code>
          capabilities to support more than the ANSI standard 8
          colors.<br />

          In addition, SXEmacs will gracefully approximate the
          colors on the face specifications to match the terminal,
          so you can share your graphics and text terminal color
          definitions and still have pretty syntax highlighting.
        </p>
      </li>
    </ul>

    <h2>Why I Use SXEmacs</h2>
    Here are a few random reasons why some folks use SXEmacs.  If
    you want to add to this list, just drop us a line on the
    mailing list.
    <pre>
  - I love the comfort of having the full power of my editor behind me
    while I'm IRC'ing, ICQ'ing, mail, and news reading.

  - Keyboard macros would have to be right up there in the list.
    Being able to define a quick keyboard macro to complete repetative
    tasks is sweet.

  - Bookmarks.  I often find myself reading through a whole bunch of
    documents at the same time (HOWTOs, READMEs etc), I can save where
    I am in each doc and easily come back to the same spot in the
    future. 

  - I just love the whole "swiss-army-knife-ed-ness" of it all.  I
    mean, c'mon, if it can't be done in SXEmacs, is it worth doing?

  - SXEmacs' extensibility.  Being able to make SXEmacs do things it
    can't do out of the box is its greatest benefit.
    </pre>
    <h2>Where We Might Be Going</h2>
    I really don't like making promises, so you'll just have to
    wait and see. :-)  OK, OK, I'll throw you a bone. Here are a
    couple of hints&hellip;
    <ul>
      <li>Multi-GUI support</li>
      <li>Parallelised lisp engine</li>
      <li>Embeddable video streams</li>
      <li>Buffers embedded in buffers</li>
      <li>Built-in lexical scoping at C level</li>
    </ul>
<!--#include virtual="/templates/copyright.template" -->
<!--#include virtual="/templates/stats.template" -->
<!--#include virtual="/templates/footer.template" -->