2 months ago
- Emacs is not an operating system but orchestrates applications and utilities above the OS kernel, enabling users to 'live only in Emacs' by fulfilling many computing needs through client modes.
- The client-server model partitions tasks between a service (provider) and a client (requester), with Emacs providing built-in and third-party libraries for implementing clients, handling UI, client-edge communication, and local databases.
- Emacs Lisp (Elisp) is a dynamic language allowing high improvisation, enabling complex orchestration of behaviors, from Elisp functions to shell commands, with examples like building a weather client using wttr.in via HTTP requests and JSON processing.
- Emacs abstracts APIs at a high level, making it easy to build clients with minimal code, as shown by the 67-line wttr.el example, or by integrating command-line utilities like a Python script as a 'service' for simpler implementations.