[tex-live] TL 2010 : Does XeLaTeX search for Emacs, and if so, why ?!

[Robin Fairbairns]

Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:

> Yes, I know that E invokes an editor; my question was "Why Emacs" ?
> 
> This is Windows, for ***'s sake : maybe WinEDT, maybe TeXshop,
> maybe EDT+, or even Notepad or Wordpad, but never Emacs ...

i've never used "e" in 2.5 decades of tex usage.   when i'm developing,
i've always got an editor open (in the background, in the days of glass
ttys).

so my hypothesis is that you're seeing a hang over from a time when
web2c was a un*x only setup.  remember, the author of web2c was closely
associated with the gnu project (other people might have chosen vi, but
not i).

since it's such a rare facility to use, it was forgotten in the move to
widnoze.  (of course, some of us use emacs under widnoze, too, but i
imagine we're a minority.)

robin