Your points concern everything around text editing, but not editing itself. Emacs brings nothing new to the table with respect to editing model, it's essentially notepad (with different interface, plugins, yada yada yada — all the things you mention). Vim has a model with modal editing, much better than Emacs. Kakoune and Helix improve this model even further.
It's like comparing cars by the color of the trim and air conditioning, instead of… er… their car performance (power, speed, fuel usage, durability).
If you don't care about editing models, and just want to "type code", then Vim is hardly the best choice. Emacs and Intellij are much better than Vim at plugins, and are as available as anything else.
> Emacs brings nothing new to the table with respect to editing model, it's essentially notepad
Emacs (1976) predates Notepad (1983).
I do understand what you mean, though. For people using Windows, Emacs needs to be sought out and installed, this effort needs to be justified (assuming one is permitted to install software at all), and hence the requirement for Emacs to "bring something new to the table" over the default option, Notepad, which is just /already there/.
The most basic, implicit, requirement, then, is exactly as GP says: availability. All else follows.
I meant Notepad as an example of something that implements the basic "move the cursor between the characters with arrow keys and type to insert text" way of interacting with text. In terms of this, Emacs is exactly Notepad + plugins. And plugins (unless they drastically change the way you interact with text, like Evil mode) are usually doing something that is orthogonal to the editing model, and can be slapped on top of any editor with any model.
I didn't mean that one is based on the other historically. Notepad was meant as the most minimal example that implements one of the Emacs'es aspects.
> Emacs brings nothing new to the table with respect to editing model, it's essentially notepad
Wow, and here I thought I had seen all derogatives about Emacs ;-) But claiming that it doesn't bring anything new compared to Notepad is really strange.
1. Emacs predates Notepad by one or two decades.
2. Have you actually had a look at what is actually included in Emacs? I am not talking about mail readers and other "apps" inside emacs. I mean just for editing text in a non-mode specific way. Things like rectangular cut and paste, vertically aligning stuff, infinite undo, undo restricted to the selection (region) and many many more stuff. That Notepad doesn't have.
> Have you actually had a look at what is actually included in Emacs?
Yes, I've been using it for a few years and made my own plugin with a couple dozen users. Then I discovered Vim overnight and never used Emacs again (literally).
> But claiming that it doesn't bring anything new compared to Notepad is really strange
It does indeed sound strange because you missed the "with respect to editing model" which is crucial for my point. Emacs has nothing in it other than Notepad + a large number of ad-hoc, non-coposable plugins each doing one task.
> Things like rectangular cut and paste, vertically aligning stuff
Ad-hoc things that do only one very specific task each. Incomparable to Kakoune's powerful and composable way of interacting with text.
> infinite undo, undo restricted to the selection (region)
Orthogonal to the editing model. These can be slapped on top of any text editor, be it vim or notepad. Just make a plugin.
Chordal editing isn't as popular as modal editing, but I do like it and think it's something uncommon in other editors, at least to the same extant as emacs.
The thing I like about emacs is the integration and consistent experience.
I can do everything in emacs (and use exwm as my window manager), so I have the same keybindings for everything.
As perhaps an extreme example, imagine having
1. A window manager like i3
2. tmux or screen
3. (n)vim or helix sessions with edited files, possibly inside tmux/screen
Each of these need to be configured separately, and each layer needs different keybindings so that uncaught ones can be forwarded from one layer to the next. Each layer is limited to only the subset of things it manages. E.g., i3 can let you switch between firefox and the terminal running tmux, but not the different sessions tmux manages, or views of any of the files in your nvim session.
Etc.
Or I could just use emacs create tiles I can move between, and each of which that is capable of opening any of my x-windows, terminal sessions, or open files.
You can even use the same autocomplete in your shell as when editing files.
I don't know of anything that gives the same simple, unified, workflow of EXWM (+ corfu&consult&...).
It does have issues and could use a serious modernization -- still single threaded in 2023, with some commands blocking IO??? -- but perhaps it's simply much too ambitious for someone to try and make a competitor.
These can have modal editing, tree sitter and lsp integration would be great, etc.
The thing I want is the smooth integration of everything I may do on a computer into one interface that emacs, but no other software I'm aware of, offers.
What is chordal editing? Google search didn't give me any results.
I agree that having different programs on you computer integrated and consistent is a good thing. Sorry for the reference to the old joke, but wouldn't all the things you list look better in a wishlist for an operating system instead of a text editor?
By chordal editing, I just meant pressing combinations of keys at the same time. Lots of editors support this to some degree, but most (AFAIK) are either modal, or don't support keyboard-driven workflows.
One of the other classic emacs jokes is about how it can take key-combinations to extremes, e.g. https://xkcd.com/378/
I agree that I'm looking for a tiling window manager. This is what EXWM (the Emacs X Window Manager) is.
The problem with things like i3, is that it is not integrated enough with editing and navigation of files.
I wish there was more in this space, as Emacs has some limitations for this purpose (e.g. multithreading), but AFAIK emacs stands alone.
It's like comparing cars by the color of the trim and air conditioning, instead of… er… their car performance (power, speed, fuel usage, durability).
If you don't care about editing models, and just want to "type code", then Vim is hardly the best choice. Emacs and Intellij are much better than Vim at plugins, and are as available as anything else.