XEmacs

XEmacs is an open-source, extensible text editor in the Emacs family. It began as a fork of Lucid Emacs, a GUI-oriented variant of GNU Emacs, and has since developed into an independent project with its own releases and ecosystem. The goal of the project was to improve graphical user interface support, portability across platforms, and built-in features while preserving the extensible, Lisp-driven core that characterizes Emacs.

Key features include a powerful editing core based on Emacs Lisp, extensive support for programming languages, and a large collection of editing commands and modes. Users customize XEmacs through initialization files and a package system that allows installation of additional functionality. The editor provides a graphical user interface with menus, toolbars, and multiple windows, as well as a traditional text-terminal interface for non-graphical environments.

XEmacs is cross-platform, running on Unix-like systems and Windows, and historically has used its own widget toolkit variants for GUI rendering. It remains compatible with much Emacs Lisp code, and many major Emacs modes and packages can be used with or adapted to XEmacs.

Development status has varied over time; after a period of rapid growth, the project faced competition from GNU Emacs and changes in the Emacs ecosystem. It continues under a community of volunteers with periodic releases and ongoing maintenance, though its user base is smaller than that of GNU Emacs.