It might be time to resurrect REmacs for the Precursor phone/device

From: https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/19/we-are-beautiful/#precursor > The Precursor is the latest open source hardware project from OSHW wizard Andrew "bunnie" Huang – AKA "the guy who broke the Xbox DRM and is now suing to overturn the DMCA." > https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5921 > It's a mobile hardware platform, "a framework upon which you can assemble a wide variety of DIY mobile applications…designed from the ground-up to be carried around in your pocket." > "It’s not just a naked circuit board with connectors hanging off at random locations: it comes fully integrated—with a rechargeable battery, a display, and a keyboard—in a sleek, 7.2 mm (quarter-inch) aluminum case." > The design is derived from the Betrusted project, an ambitious open source hardware privacyphone initiative that is super cool, but still has a long way to go before it's ready for field use. **** After digging through the docs, it looks like it uses a Rust-based OS called Xous https://xobs.io/announcing-xous-the-betrusted-operating-system/ Given that this is a BW graphics device with a hardware keyboard, long battery life, wifi, and fits into your pocket -- this might be the ideal mobile emacs device. ***** I'm not sure if Emacs will compile on it, and there's no X11 or Wayland to speak of, so there will be some roadbumps.

Hitting and holding CTRL and/or META is gonna be a pain on this thing.

>I'm not sure if Emacs will compile on it, and there's no X11 or Wayland to speak of, so there will be some roadbumps. That's likely the understatement of the year, given that the OS is not even remotely POSIX like and does not have a C API. I don't see why you would want to run Emacs on that hw - with that tiny screen and cramped keyboard (it is a phone!) it is going to be pretty much unusable for anything practical.

...no more so than the doing it on the Nokia N900, and I've used Emacs on that quite happily I'd say

I doubt you could run modern Emacs on this thing. It has a 100MHz processor.

To me the form looks ideal, as something I can literally carry anywhere and type out entire assays on, similar to the old HW keyboard phones of yesteryear. As for not having a C API, isn't this where REmacs will shine? Or is that also C dependent?

> I can literally carry anywhere and type out entire assays on You are either an extreme masochist or have very special ideas about what is ergonomic or practical. Have you actually tried to use one of those HW keyboard phones of yesteryear for a similar purpose? Or tried to type anything semi-long form on any phone, for that matter (there are external keyboards available)? Even without the usual multi-key keybindings that Emacs is known for, using a simple editor? >As for not having a C API, isn't this where REmacs will shine? That the OS and Remacs are both written in Rust doesn't mean they will work together. There is the entire OS API to consider, there are external dependencies that Remacs uses and which are likely C library with Rust bindings, etc. The phone is literally an FPGA development platform, it doesn't even have a CPU in a classical sense, only some sort of soft-core focused on cryptography.

Don't forget our history.. people been running Emacs in the before times on 8MHz computers :) In fact, vanilla relatively current Emacs runs okay on about a 200MHz PC I was fiddling with just a couple years ago: http://firebee.org/fb-bin/index

Apologies, I wasn't trying to offend - merely sharing some hopeful excitement. I've owned both a Nokia N900, as well as several standard T9 handsets, and I find typing out paragraphs in both to be far more superior in terms of the tactile feedback you get compared to software keyboard where you have to visually confirm everything that you type. I see, I hadn't considered the dependencies and that interacting with the OS would be difficult. Has Emacs not been ported onto such microdevices before?

So typical of early twenty-something's to reflexively draw the inner-join between two disparate entities, in this case an experimental handheld and emacs, based on a common buzzword, in this case "Rust," without so much as a passing thought on what that would require. I suppose it's natural that guys without a career or family have no concept of time investment. For them it makes absolute sense to burn the 1000 man-hours so that a few hipsters with handlebar mustaches can `M-x doctor` riding in a sidecar.

I was just putting out some feelers to see if this was possible, and maybe to generate some excitement for a possible portable emacs device. I did not really expect such harsh (and might I add, largely false) personal judgement, and given the hobbyist hackable roots of both projects, I assumed there would be some shared excitement across groups. I guess I was wrong, apologies.

I see. So the 200 or so man-hours that failed to get remacs to work reasonably on a vanilla linux desktop should now seem quaint now that the prize is squinting at and typing into emacs on a pinephone also-ran with a pair of toothpicks. Excitement, indeed.

Well no, hence the title of my post, that maybe this would spur on a second wind of development for the REmacs project. Yes, it could also die into obscurity as you suggest, but it could also be a fun/educational project

Remacs is dead, it lost connection with the Emacs project, it wasn't possible to continue with it, the project lost the moving target

You haven't offended anyone but I think you are being a bit overly enthusiastic here :) Yes, hardware keyboard is almost always superior for actual typing than on screen keyboard but for Emacs that's likely not enough. At least for me it certainly wouldn't be. >Has Emacs not been ported onto such microdevices before? Emacs no. Emacs is very much historically tied to Posix-like systems. Certainly no microcontrollers or phones unless the device runs Linux (Android doesn't count, that's not Linux). And anyhow, that's completely irrelevant because Remacs is not the same thing as Emacs. It has its own share of platform requirements. If you need something to write up assays (I suppose lab work?), get a tablet with pen input, for example. Much more real-world practical than this gizmo with Emacs. Of course, free as in freedom and such doesn't apply but we are talking about getting work done, not ideology or playing with gadgets.

> maybe this would spur on a second wind of development for the REmacs project Nah, they have moved into emacs-ng which is supposed to bring emacs-lisp development with javascript driven by super-modern ultra-speedy Rust frameworks. You can find them on /r/emacsng or on their [github](https://github.com/emacs-ng/emacs-ng).

People are amazingly reactionary when it comes to typing on phones, but in reality even touch screen keyboards are basically fine. -- sent from my smartphone

You needn't use "modern Emacs". There's 37 years worth of GNU Emacs releases to choose from :)