Acme FAQ

• Q: Does Acme depend on using a three button mouse?

• A: Acme is as dependent on a three button mouse as Emacs is on finger gymnastics and vim is on the Esc key. But don’t let it discourage you, Acme’s user interface makes much better use of the mouse than any other text editor. (Paraphrased from an answer given by Jessta on golang-nuts.)

• Q: Is there syntax highlighting?

• A: No. The creator of main users of Acme find syntax highlighting unhelpful and distracting.

• Q: What is the origin of the name?

• A: Rob Pike explains:

  When I started working on Acme, I had a pretty strong idea about what it would be and what it would look like, but I didn’t have a name yet. As I usually did at the time, on Friday night I went to Times Square for Movie Night. Penn Jillette was there, and I told him I needed a name for my new project.

  “What does it do?” he asked.

  “Umm… Everything.” I said.

  “Acme,” said Penn, and laughed.

  And that was it.