Emacs Stands For

Describe what EmacsStandsFor here.

OK, "E.M.A.C.S." is an acronym for...

• EMACS: Escape, Meta, Alt, Control, Shift
• EMACS: EMACS Makes A Computer Slow
• EMACS: EMACS Makes A Computer Slick
• EMACS: EMACS Macht Alle Computer Schoen
• EMACS: Eventually malloc()'s All Computer Storage
• EMACS: Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
• EMACS: Excavating Mayan Architecture Comes Simpler
• EMACS: Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping
• EMACS: Even a Master of Art Comes Simpler
• EMACS: Every Male Adolescent Craves Sex
• EMACS: EMACS Makes All Computing Suck
• EMACS: EMACS Manuals Are Cryptic and Surreal
• GNU EMACS: Generally Not Used Except by Middle Aged Computer Scientists
• EMACS: EMACS Means A Crappy Screen
• EMACS: Eventually Munches All Computer Storage
• EMACS: EMACS MACRO ACTED CREDO SODOM
• EMACS: EMACS Makers Are Crazy Sickos

 EMACS
 MACRO
 ACTED
 CREDO
 SODOM

... And many more. See "/usr/share/emacs/18496.32815 (or your version number)/etc/JOKES"

But for the true meaning:

• EMACS: EMACS Makes All Computing Simple--inmet!tower@cca-unix

"Eighty Megabytes...": Some years ago this was "Eight Megabytes...". Probably increases by a magnitude every couple of years. Is this EmacsLaw? similar to MooresLaw?

Actually, it still is eight megabytes. Doesn't seem so bad these days, does it? I guess emacs was just a bit ahead of its time.

Hm, the "constantly swapping" thingie applies better to most Java editors out there than to Emacs these days. Comparatively, Emacs or XEmacs are really slim and faster than their Java counterparts.

And EMACS is...

 * "EMACS is my operating system; Linux is my device driver." or "UNIX is a nice operating system, but I prefer EMACS." -- Unknown '
 * 'I have always heard this as "EMACS is a nice operating system, but Unix has the better editor."''
 * 'Also: "EMACS is a nice operating system, it just lacks a text editor"''
 * Jargon file:  http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/e/EMACS.html See also http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?Emacs

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"_____ is my operating system; _____ is my device driver."

Ya know, there was a time when this seemed absurd to me (how droll), and then I worked for some years in FoxPro, and found that FoxPro was my OS, and the OS du jour was my device driver. The more more I worked with it, the less I found it couldn't do, to the point where the only thing I wasn't doing with it was running other (binary) applications. If what I've heard of EMACS is true, then I can well understand how this occurs. -- GarryHamilton

The coworker who introduced me to Emacs (in 1983) called Unix the "Emacs run-time support system".

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GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a text editor.

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Use it often enough and you'll find that you've been emacsculated ...

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"EMACS is a nice operating system, it just lacks a text editor"

Usually said by VI users. They forget VIPER: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~kifer/emacs.html

Emacs is a better VI implementation than VIM! http://www.vim.org

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[CategoryEmacs] See: BackroNym