First, let me thank you for the compliment. Like Avis "We're Number Two and we try harder!", but GNU Emacs /always/ has been the dominant Emacs.<p>Why did I start using XEmacs? I had a crash that affected both Emacsen, and I was able to fix it in XEmacs (after failing in GNU Emacs) because the code was well-modularized and clear. For my tastes, this remains true today.<p>And, sure, people still use XEmacs. Admittedly, I use it for personal and political reasons (I'm not comfortable in the Emacs milieu), but also for technical reasons and dev/social reasons. Basically, as with my first contribution, I still find XEmacs easier to hack, and my colleagues are less likely to demand changes that offend my sense of design. Obviously, I believe in eating my own dogfood. I think a lot of XEmacs users are also XEmacs developers, for similar reasons.<p>Also, I know of several large firms (that I've been asked not to name), that can afford to pay internal support staff, where 50% to 80% of the Emacsen users prefer XEmacs. The reasons offered range from internally developed features (that I lust for but our GPL prevents distribution because they link to proprietary libraries) to general ease of hacking and maintenance. (N.B. I get my information from the support crew, not the users.)<p>So, I don't blame people who just want a well-supported editor for using Emacs instead of XEmacs. Their support /is/ better.<p>Nevertheless, as Mark Twain once said, "The reports of my death are somewhat exaggerated."<p>I have a more to say at <a href="http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Blog/Software/WhyIUseXEmacs" rel="nofollow">http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Blog/Software/WhyIUseXEmacs</a>, but the above is a good-enough summary, and this reply is already too long. :-)<p>stephen@xemacs.org