Xemacs or Emacs?

The first question you will probably ask yourself is ``emacs or xemacs?'' But hopefully you won't waste too much time deliberating, because the answer is essentially, ``it doesn't matter.'' There's a deep historical and political split that divides the two software programs, and now that so much water has passed under the bridge it's unlikely we'll ever see a reconciliation. But from the writer's point of view, the two programs are identical: they both have the same functionality, a nearly-identical interface, and mostly-identical commands, so much so that I can write this manual for both programs without having to specify all the time which program I'm talking about.

That said, let's look at the distinctions: one of Xemacs' design goals was to streamline the emacs interface in ways that made it more logical from the new user's point of view, and integrate it more fully with the X window system (i.e. the graphical display). This happened at a time when emacs was still a console program. Since then, emacs has made its peace with X and has a graphical display of its own. Since splitting, both programs have borrowed liberally from the other.