Which is better, xemacs or gnu emacs?

[Mike Cox]

"Tim McNamara" <timmcn@bitstream.net> wrote in message
news:m2wtysbw01.fsf@Stella-Blue.local...
> mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com (Mike Cox) writes:
>
> > I recently switched to xemacs as my default word processor so I
> > could do formatting in TEX for a very long document.  Most recently
> > I've been using Microsoft Word, the latest version.  I switched
> > because I thought that emacs had perfect stability and no crashes.
> > My perception was formed due to the constant FSF/GPL/Linux advocacy
> > promoted on slashdot and all the comp newsgroups.
>
> As a couple of minor quibbles:
>
> 1.  XEmacs is not Emacs, and XEmacs is not GNU or FSF software.
>     XEmacs and Emacs are not interchangeable.

So which is better, XEmacs or GNU/Emacs?

> 2.  Nothing has perfect stability, everything else does not.

I understand.  So are you saying GNU/Emacs is more stable?

> 3.  As a result, saving frequently and backing up one's documents is
>     always a good idea.

So I could probably just use MS Word and get the features of VBA and COM+
support, not to mention the robust default functionality?  If everyone
crashes, why not just use the most feature rich program that has the most
users?

> 4.  Emacs by default creates backup documents, you'll find them in
>     the same directory as the file you were working on with a tilde
>     after the filename.  Hopefully XEmacs, which I've never used, does
>     the same thing.

I looked for it.  I also did that ALT-M thing to try to recover.  Whatever
happened must of been quite serious because it ate my autosave document.

> See:
>
> http://www.xemacs.org/About/XEmacsVsGNUemacs.html
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html

WOW.  Those OSS/GNU guys really are immature.  I followed a link on the
xemacs.org site and they really duked it out over emacs.  For those of you
who would really like to see RMS and the XEMACS team battle from 15 years
ago, visit this site:
http://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html

Talk about a nasty exchange.