How Emacs should get more users

A response to Making Emacs popular again.

This assumes that is a worthy goal, which I believe it is. I won't be discussing whether or not we should do it, I'm only presenting how I think we should do it.

First, realize that users are different

Recognize why the competition is succeeding

Sublime innovations which are here to stay

Sublime Text specifically has influenced all modern editors, as far as I can tell. Here are the things I think they caused to happen, and critical features they popularized:

I don't think VSCode is sufficiently innovative over Sublime Text, but is still a useful data point.

Red herrings

The following are Emacs Improvement ideas that I think are red herrings, and may even reduce the quality of Emacs:

What I think makes Emacs shine

In a few words, comparatively low effort, more powerful customization. No editor lets you make the perfect environment like Emacs does.

Here are things I think are NOT important about Emacs, and therefore we should not be resistant to change:

Things I am opinionated on, that I think Emacs should lean into

These aren't necessarily the best things to do to increase userbase, but are things I don't want to see go away.

What I think should be done

These things would, in my opinion, make Emacs attract and keep more users. They are ordered roughly from most to least important

User keybind profiles

At startup, offer categories (starter packs, a bit like suggested in the mailing list) for the most common user groups:

It should just be a dropdown/radial list selection, not any sort of advanced configuration UI or language they need to use.

Additionally, the profile should change the following behaviors:

Clipboard

The Windows/CUA application profile should be based as closely as possible to VSCode and Sublime Text, which have quite similar bindings to each other. Importantly, the Windows/CUA profile should have a truly equal clipboard experience. What I mean by that is:

Window docking/splitting

With the keybinds close to Windows/CUA/Sublime, and the clipboard as identical in behavior as possible, the only big things remaining are buffer management and window management. These will need to be learned by the user unless Emacs chose to adopt a tabbed interface with docking and splitting.

If we do want mouse-controllable docking and splitting, it should in my opinion be based on Visual Studio proper. dear imgui docking branch uses a similar model, and it works very well. A minimal mouse-based solution could be like Blender, where when you drag a corner widget it splits the window, then merges if you drag a view until it's very small. I don't actually think Sublime nor VSCode excel at window splitting/merging, so we could beat them in that aspect if we wanted.

I personally don't think that is necessary because I'm happy with just keyboard commands. I base my config on browser shortcuts: C-t splits (a new "tab"), C-w closes buffer, C-S-w closes window (remove split), C-S-t reopens buffer.

I think not having tabs is nice because I don't have to muck with tab order, or having so many tabs that you have to scroll and read tiny clips of text. A ido-style selection list is sufficient in my opinion. Clicking on the buffer's name should trigger that selection list.

Tutorial

Rather than a text-heavy tutorial or splash-screen, start with a very minimal centered text saying most fundamental commands:

This is much like Sublime and VSCode's empty window, while still leaving space for the splashscreen info.

For example, the splashscreen would present the Emacs logo and the following text (where keybinds are automatically adjusted to the user's profile, in this case the Sublime and VSCode-like CUA profile):

C-S-p : find and run command
C-o : open a file

C-h : get help
C-h-m : list available keybinds
C-p customize : change settings

C-S-p quit-window : quit emacs

Key: C- = hold Ctrl key and press...
     S- = hold Shift key and press...
     M- = hold Alt key and press...

That very short key is necessary and efficient at introducing the user to Emacs' non-standard keybinding format.

It may be necessary to include buttons for all of those commands adjacent to the keybind.

Then, with a significant amount of whitespace below that, the normal splashscreen text and info.

As for the tutorial, there should be a high-level version created that only introduces the fundamental Emacs concepts, as briefly as possible, e.g.:

I don't think new users should start with the Emacs binds, which means the regular C-h t tutorial should be changed for those users to not have any of the key motion distractions.

ELisp Introduction

For more intermediate/advanced programmers, a "Intro to ELisp" tutorial should be written, which should contain the following info:

It should be as brief as possible - an overview. I find the current documentation to be a bit too all-inclusive to serve as a very good introduction.

I don't think ELisp is significantly worse than e.g. Python or Javascript, but its ramp-up documentation certainly is (or at the very least, there are much fewer people trying to introduce ELisp than e.g. Python or JS).

Discovery

I think Ido-everywhere and smex present a good way to make Emacs more discoverable. They resemble Sublime's and VSCode's selection dialog, used for selecting themes, projects, buffers, project files, goto-symbol, etc.

I also think fuzzy search is a very powerful addition to searching. Most post-Sublime editors I have tried have fuzzy search and Sublime Goto/Command functionality.

Package visibility

Potentially on the splashscreen, show a list of the most popular packages. This helps people who need e.g. Web-mode to immediately see that Emacs does cater to their needs, they just need to install that package first.

Preferably, MELPA should be effortless to enable (e.g. a checkbox that says "see packages from other sources").

Appearance

Start by default with a dark theme. All modern code editors do this. Offer to change themes on the startup screen.

Because the Icons/mouse-driven UI is rough, have an option to disable that as well. When clicked, print that they can find commands via M-x (preferably saying "Alt-X", or for Windows keybinds profile, C-p).

Emacs should ship with a modern-looking font (possibly many). My personal choice is Ubuntu Mono, but licensing certainly wouldn't be possible for it. If a modern looking and licensable font does not exist yet, potentially using the default "best" font likely to be on that user's OS may be a good idea:

Adding some padding to the margins and additional line height also goes a long way to making Emacs look more modern.

Present Emacs as an editor for the True Power User

This helps lean into its obscurity as a sign that only the experts are wise enough to use it, and if you put in the effort to try, you too can be come a master. I think a lot of people are attracted to Vim because of this, whereas Emacs misses that audience.

I think Vim's learning curve is much sharper keybinds-wise, but surprisingly still has a larger userbase. We should look into why that is the case. Vim's configuration language and extensibility is god-awful, so I don't think Emacs' use of ELisp is actually the problem there.

In conclusion

I think none of my proposal would be impossible, nor even very difficult to implement.

I understand it's mostly a political problem. I think getting buy-in is made much easier by having the user profile selection on the splashscreen, such that power emacs users can get the same experience they expect by clicking two buttons (click dropdown, select "Classic Emacs", or just run a command, etc.).

The profiles proposal means that the new changes could be completely isolated from the classic experience to not alienate any existing user. I do think that the default should be the new experience, however. New users might not want to change any settings until they've experienced the program, so the default should be the most familiar compared to other text editing experiences.

Other comments

My opinion on Doom, Spacemacs, etc.

These are harmful to Emacs and users of Emacs for two reasons:

We can kill these by making base Emacs the most popular and accessible distribution.

My config

My config is much like the Windows/CUA/Sublime profile I proposed, with the expected clipboard and multiple-cursors behavior.

I get along just fine using ETags/CTags and xref for a LSP-mode type experience. I found setting up LSP stuff to be very annoying, and the user experience terribly slow on a 4 million line codebase.

Some of the X-factors I've gotten that I wouldn't get easily from non-Emacs editors:

These things took time and effort, but it was rewarding to make and would have been impossible to get out of the box. My requirements are too specific to fit in other editors, which is why Emacs is still the best.

Responses

I linked to this article on reddit, which spawned some lively discussion. My opinions on LSP and Doom/Spacemacs proved to be controversial. They may have poisioned the well for the rest of my ideas here for some people, unfortunately.

If I were to write it again I would leave out the Doom/Spacemacs section, especially because it was added as an afterthought anyways.

Published on . Written by Macoy Madson.