Thoughts on Discordant Environments

I've never used a Canon Cat, but I've read a small bit about its interface whilst looking around for
any neat ideas.  It was interesting to see an idea I'd imagined and found neat for an ideal computer
present well before I'd considered it: A Canon Cat could store its entire working memory to a floppy
disk for use in another Canon Cat elsewhere.  Considerations of security preclude this nowadays, but
I still like the idea.  Its two ``leap keys'' are used by typing text while holding them down, which
seems very inconvenient to me.  I struggle to find much difference between them, and the C-s and C-r
chords in GNU Emacs.  Particularly interesting is the idea of but a single environment for which the
operating system evaporates around the task; the Canon Cat apparently supported applications such as
spreadsheets through its normal command set, and the ability to execute parts of a document as code.

I envy that kind of harmony, or at least its idea.  GNU Emacs is overwhelmingly that lone program in
which I spend most of my time on the computer.  It's occasionally too frustrating to make some tweak
on a whim, and I largely avoid writing Emacs Lisp at all, but the option's present with most systems
exposing the obvious options for customization through more convenient hooks.  Not all of my time at
the machine is spent in Emacs, however.  I use StumpWM as that metaprogram organizing those others I
use; typing C-t t to send a C-t chord to Emacs is a minor complaint, and I've never bothered to pick
a different prefix key, although the choice is available also just as it would be from within Emacs.
I often watch myself somehow confusing StumpWM's focus-switching command C-t o with the Emacs C-x o.

I've lately been taking very large documents and keeping them in one buffer, but separated with page
characters, like chapters in stories.  Emacs' narrow-to-page command, and a few other page commands,
has made this rather convenient.  I'm sure using systems like org-mode would allow me to go further.

I usually use programs at fullscreen in StumpWM.  I've started to use multiple screens regularly and
also started to struggle with them; it's not uncommon for me to fumble some command by sending it to
a wrong program, although this rarely results in anything amiss.  It's made me all the more aware of
the dearth of input histories: Only Emacs offers any feature like this via its chord sequence C-h l.
For any other program, I'm forced to remember and guess at what input I'd sent alongside its effect.

StumpWM offers functionality for switching its focus differently, which I may need to start using to
avoid this.  The situation would be tolerable were it only StumpWM, Emacs, and some lesser programs.

Mozilla Firefox is the other program I most often use, usually when not using Emacs, and I loathe it
in all respects.  Were I able to avoid it, I'd gladly, but the WWW has wormed its way into society's
core, and even the IETF is mostly preoccupied by replacing custom protocols with various HTTP filth.
I'm likely never going to figure out a good way to replace Firefox's text fields with Emacs buffers,
and far too much circumvents its default fields regardless.  It's rather pathetic, I think, to copy-
and-paste comments and the like on a supposedly advanced operating system; I suppose I'm truly using
multiple operating systems forced to interact with each other through interfaces designed by idiots.

I could always switch away from Firefox to something, really anything, more tolerable, if it weren't
for the final pain in the ass to which I'm subjected daily: programs on the WWW.  Plenty of programs
nowadays are exposed solely via websites, and the advertising cartel has ensured these programs have
interfaces which allow them to detect ``tampering'', so the interface they offer is largely what one
gets.  So, each website is its own little world in a tab in Firefox managed by a window manager such
as StumpWM in yet a greater system I do my damnedest to ignore.  This utter Hell could be stopped by
a better design, but interests have entrenched themselves so deeply they instead seek to control man
from his own personal telescreen without so much as doing anything useful in return for this injury.

I've nothing bad to say about Decker, which lives in its own little world too, but for a good reason
and rather inoffensively.  Decker, like Emacs, plays nicely with the greater system around it, which
should be the baseline expectation.  A program like Firefox only exists to look upon another's work.

I suppose I should seek to start lopping off heads from this hydra by seeking out dedicated programs
addressing those few websites I still use.  Emacs is the proper substrate for most of these, and the
programs likely already exist if I but look for them.  I'm familiar with a small website whose owner
is making it ever hostile to non-browser clients without much good reason, as if HTTP weren't shitty
enough, so perhaps the boring game of cat-and-mouse will end in the death of the worthless WWW, with
something better replacing it.  The notion of networked software dictating its interface is asinine.

I should also look at Arcan sometime, a system supposedly designed to address some of this worthless
bullshit.  In any case, I'm sure using a system with any relationship to UNIX will continue to suck.
.