As an interesting sidepoint, the "sed" command, often used by scripts for search/replace actions is based on "ed". The name actually stands for "stream editor" and is designed to let you apply ed's commands to a stream of data as it flows through a pipe from one command to another.
Emacs is also really great as a windowing interface for users remotely logging in over a text terminal interface. You can launch shells in Emacs buffers and copy/paste text between them and document buffers.
This was a really big deal when I was in college and my access to the university's VAXes were via 80x24 text terminals (whether hard-wired or dial-up).
I also think that the "Gnus" news reader (shipped with most builds of Emacs) is the best NNTP news reader ever written.
The joke about Emacs being "an operating system with a text editor included" is not so much a complaint, but a reference to the fact that it is a really good application platform thanks to an incredibly robust LISP programming environment.
Authored Comments
As an interesting sidepoint, the "sed" command, often used by scripts for search/replace actions is based on "ed". The name actually stands for "stream editor" and is designed to let you apply ed's commands to a stream of data as it flows through a pipe from one command to another.
Emacs is also really great as a windowing interface for users remotely logging in over a text terminal interface. You can launch shells in Emacs buffers and copy/paste text between them and document buffers.
This was a really big deal when I was in college and my access to the university's VAXes were via 80x24 text terminals (whether hard-wired or dial-up).
I also think that the "Gnus" news reader (shipped with most builds of Emacs) is the best NNTP news reader ever written.
The joke about Emacs being "an operating system with a text editor included" is not so much a complaint, but a reference to the fact that it is a really good application platform thanks to an incredibly robust LISP programming environment.